


Next Exit

by drambuie11



Series: Province [5]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, Crossover Pairings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-04
Updated: 2012-02-08
Packaged: 2017-10-28 21:42:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 68,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drambuie11/pseuds/drambuie11
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xander hits the road with the Winchesters. SLASH. Dean/Xander.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Goodbye Babylon

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: Story title from a song by Interpol. No specific spoilers to speak of. These characters are not mine, I make no profit from this, and didn't mean to infringe on any copyright.
> 
> This story is the sixth in a series; you probably need to read 'Set The Fire To The Third Bar', 'Standing In The Doorway', 'And All That Could Have Been','Kashmir' and 'Ten Years Gone' first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from a song by The Black Keys.

Dean was driving down a back road somewhere in California. It was a highway, sort of, an old one, winding through arid hills. The car was warm and growling under the sun, miles and miles of blue sky stretching overhead. Anticipation built in his gut as every twist of the road brought him closer to Alex.

The car passed a mile marker, and Dean judged it close enough. He pulled his phone out, unable to keep a grin off his face as he dialled Alex’s number.

“Yeah?” The voice on the other end was gruff, but Dean wasn’t deterred.

“Hey there, how you doing?” He was blatantly flirting, and he felt so goddamn _free_ about it. “You wouldn’t happen to be available this weekend, would you?”

There was one last moment of sweetness before the voice that answered turned his guts to ice.

“Well, gee, Dean. I think I’ll have to check my calendar.”

It wasn’t Alex. Dean froze in horror, even as the coyness in the demon’s voice turned his stomach.

“You son of a bitch,” he managed, too shocked to make the insult sound anything other than automatic.

“Aw, you’re such a flatterer,” it said, voice still warm like it was _teasing_ , what the fuck. “And I’m afraid I’m gonna have to take a rain check, Dean-o. I’ve had so much fun playing with your precious Alex, I’m all tired out.”

Horror swept over him again. The world spun, and for a moment there was nothing but white noise. Dean swallowed bile, and gripped the phone so tight it almost snapped.

“Although,” the demon went on thoughtfully. “I don’t think it was too much fun for Alex right at the end there.” Its voice was still mocking him, playing at sincerity and concern.

“Oh my God,” he said faintly. He distantly realised his hand was shaking.

“No God, boy, just me. It’s always been me, it was always going to be me,” it hissed. The thing’s accent and halting diction made the words sound strange and unreal, even as they carved themselves into Dean’s brain. “It was always going to be like this. You were always going to be too late to stop me.”

The phone fell from Dean’s numb fingers. He wanted to scream but he couldn’t quite manage it, couldn’t quite think with pain crashing through him so hard.

His vision had narrowed to the slice of empty highway directly in front of him. He stared at it without really comprehending what he was seeing.

Suddenly he did comprehend, and realised he was staring at a bend in the road, a sharp curve where the ground on the other side dropped away into nothing.

The car swallowed asphalt as it hurtled forwards, but he couldn’t turn, couldn’t stop it.

He didn’t want to.

He let it happen, let it all unfold around him in slow motion. The car flew off the edge of the highway, and as it arced up and came crashing down again, the world around him splintered. Glass flew, everything was up-ended. He was sure he wouldn’t survive.

The terror and destruction felt fitting, though, felt inevitable. Alex was gone, that warm spot inside Dean’s chest was going to be cold and broken forever, and it seemed right that the world should end.

The moment yawned, and then suddenly contracted. Dean woke with a start. His vision swam a little while his brain adjusted to consciousness, adjusted to the reality that his nightmare hadn’t happened.

The first thing he noticed was the rain spitting on the window next to him, and how dim the light in the minivan was. It was different enough from the saturated sunlight of his nightmare to be an immediate relief. He looked over – Alex was asleep against the other window. The sight of him didn’t totally dispel the clench in the pit of Dean’s stomach, but it helped some. He could see Alex breathing, which was good, and he knew that if he reached over he’d be able to feel warmth and skin.

He didn’t, though, didn’t want to wake him up. It was dark, probably too late or too early, and Dean was content to watch quietly just for a minute, let his brain catch up and the last of the nightmare fade away.

It was the first time he’d woken up before Alex, the first time he hadn’t woken up alone. Which, sure, this time Alex had nowhere to go until the car stopped. But whatever, it was better when the first thing Dean saw was Alex, right there in front of him.

Then Dean sighed and tried to sit up a little straighter in his seat. He popped his neck, trying to ease the crick he’d gotten in it from sleeping crammed up against the window. Alex was there, the nightmare wasn’t real – he should have known it wasn’t, because his goddamn car was already trashed, and man, he didn’t want to think about that – and he needed to get over it.

He cleared his throat, trying to wake himself up a little more. John was slumped down in the front passenger seat, apparently also asleep, and Sam was behind the wheel. They probably switched at the last gas stop, and Dean hadn’t been awake enough to notice.

Outside the van it was dark. The headlights barely illuminated anything, just rain and the reflective strips on the road that divided the lanes. When Dean peered out through the window, he could see that the highway was bordered by trees, lots of trees, but he had no idea where they were or what time it was.

“Where are we?” he asked Sam, keeping his voice low so as not to wake the others.

“Missouri,” Sam replied, voice also soft. He didn’t sound surprised, so he must have noticed when Dean woke up. “We just detoured around St Louis and got back on the highway about ten minutes ago.”

Dean hunched down a little in his seat. Then he thought about it and felt stupid, because the chances of a cop spotting him in the back seat of a minivan in the dark on a highway outside the city and remembering that he looked like a dead guy wanted for murder were pretty slim.

After a moment, he asked, “What time is it?”

“Around three,” Sam said, yawning a little.

“Want me to drive?” Dean offered. Sam might not have been driving that long, but late night and early morning driving shifts always sucked the most.

“Nah, I’m okay for a while longer. Plus, you were recently in a coma, so no,” he said pointedly.

“Okay, okay,” Dean replied, rolling his eyes. Silence fell over the car for a moment, but Dean didn’t really want the conversation to end. The only alternative was thinking, and he wasn’t really awake enough yet to have the required amount of control over his brain for that. “How’s everything? The drive, how’s the drive, I mean?” he stammered. Wow, that really hadn’t worked. He probably should have stuck to thinking.

“Fine,” Sam replied, and Dean didn’t have to be able to see his face to know he was smiling at Dean’s total lack of smoothness. “I mean, the van’s a piece of shit, or we’d be making better time,” Sam went on. “But, you know.”

“Maybe we can get something better somewhere, if it’s going to crap out before we reach LA,” Dean suggested, trying not to think about the Impala. His eyes strayed sideways, to Alex. Who was still fine, still asleep. That was good.

“Maybe,” Sam agreed softly. Another moment of silence, then Sam said, “How about you, Dean? How’s everything with you?”

The question startled Dean a little, mostly because it sounded like Sam was actually serious. There was enough sincerity in his voice, and when Dean looked, enough tension in his fingers around the steering wheel, to tell him Sam was worried.

“Fine, Sam,” he said, and maybe it was the remnants of his dream, but he couldn’t quite shrug the question off like he wanted. His eyes slid over to Alex again, and he had to make the effort not to think about yellow eyes and crashed cars under blue sky. “I mean, what’s coming will either turn out alright or it’ll be my worst nightmare, but there’s not a whole lot I can do about it right now.”

Then he cleared his throat, and added, determined, “We’re gonna be fine.”

“He still hasn’t thrown you out,” Sam said.

For a second, Dean wondered why Sam was worried Alex would throw Dean out of the car. Then he realised Sam was referring to their earlier conversation – which seriously felt like it happened weeks ago, not just a day and a half – and he tried to get his brain back on track. God, he was not awake yet.

Anyway, whatever Sam meant, it was a little off the mark, a little to the left of what Dean had been thinking about, and it also wasn’t as reassuring as Sam probably meant it to be. Dean couldn’t quite bring himself to read too much into the fact that Alex hadn’t said no, because all it meant was that he hadn’t said no yet. He shrugged it off, though; he didn’t want to think about all of it right now.

“No, he hasn’t.” When in doubt, change the subject, he decided. “So, hey, did you read anything else interesting before we left? Any random witchy voodoo shit you can entertain me with?”

“I’m the one driving, dude, you’re supposed to entertain _me_ ,” Sam replied. “And not with another Jack Nicholson impersonation, _please_ , Dean, seriously.”

“Jack’s the best in my repertoire, man, I gotta play to my strengths.”

“God,” Sam muttered, and Dean could practically hear his eyes rolling. “Tell me about hunting with Alex instead,” he suggested. “Did you guys ever take on anything interesting?”

“Well, the reason I’d go over to San Francisco wasn’t usually to hunt. We didn’t really get out of the motel room a whole lot, if you know what I mean,” Dean leered.

It surprised a soft laugh out of Sam, and Dean could tell he was still smiling when he whined, “Oh, gross, Dean, don’t talk about having sex. I’m your brother, I do not want to think about it.”

Dean ignored the complaining and huffed a bit, still too sleepy to actually laugh. “Honestly, dude, the point was never to go hunting together. The point was that we _didn’t_ hunt, that we would take a break. We were each others’ vacation, I guess,” he said, feeling just a little nostalgic. Looking back, it seemed simpler, holing up in the motel room, shutting out the rest of the world. Even though, at the time, it’d felt like anything but.

“The few times we did hunt some stuff, it was usually because we accidentally stumbled across it, you know? We dusted a couple of vampires in bars, and once Alex got a call about a semi-harmless demon they thought was in the area and we checked it out, but that was about it,” he added, then broke off thoughtfully.

Sam didn’t comment, and seemed to be waiting.

“I did take him on a hunt with me once,” Dean finally admitted. He hesitated, thinking back.

“There was this hospital up in San Rafael, and employees kept turning up dead and covered in alcohol. I was thinking of cutting the weekend short to go up there, but then Alex had the whole week off work so I just...invited him along.”

Sam was about to ask something else, Dean could tell, so he went on. “And the case, the case was crazy. It turned out this dude had died on the table when the surgeon was drunk, and he was all pissed off about it. I mean, it made sense because this surgeon, I swear, it was enough to make you never want to go to hospital ever, ever again.”

“The ghost was buried instead of cremated, so at least that part was easy. But while we were there, this guy, an orderly or something, who’d been getting epically, _epically_ drunk on his night off, was dragged in and we had to get him out. It got a little messy, believe me, and not just because of the ghost. Drunk people are really, really not helpful. Only up side was that the amount of alcohol the guy had put away meant we didn’t have to worry about him remembering anything in the morning.”

Sam chuckled. “Man, that sounds crazy. How’d Alex do?”

“Good. He’s really good, and I ain’t biased when I say that. He’s inventive and fucking clever, and he’s got really good instincts. Good skills, too, and he hadn’t even been properly trained back then, not like you and me.

“Must be down to where he lived, and all the stuff that happened in high school,” Sam suggested.

Dean shrugged. “Yeah, well. A lot of weird shit goes down near the hellmouth, and Alex is usually right in the middle of it.” He’d meant it to be light, like it was amusing or whatever, but there must have been something in his voice that Sam picked up on, something serious.

“Must be hard,” Sam said quietly, and Dean winced. He hesitated before he spoke, unwilling to agree even though Sam was right on the money.

“What he went through last year—“ He stopped, shook his head and closed his eyes. He felt sick again, thinking about Alex’s year and how badly he needed to not have done what he did. Or something. “Can we talk about something else?” He just couldn’t wake up enough, and he couldn’t have this conversation while he was still half asleep.

“Yeah,” Sam said sheepishly. Despite his agreement, though, the awkward pause that followed gradually stretched into silence, as they both tried to think of something to say.

Dean filled the gap with some more staring at Alex. He knew watching someone sleep was creepy, but hell, he was right there. What was Dean supposed to do, not look?

Sam kept quiet, kept driving. After a while, John woke up. Dean wasn’t watching – he was still giving his gaze about equal time on Alex and the window – but he noticed when John cleared his throat and shifted, lifting his head and sitting up in his seat. He cleared his throat and stretched out his arms and then his legs as much as he could in the cramped front seat.

It was still fully dark, and they weren’t passing any road signs, so Dean wasn’t surprised when his father’s first question was, “Where are we?”

“Somewhere in Missouri,” Sam said. “About an hour out of St Louis.”

John nodded, then yawned. He glanced into the back, and saw Dean was awake. “Alex still asleep?”

“Yeah,” Dean said. He didn’t offer anything else. He didn’t really know what to say.

They lapsed into silence again, a silence that reminded Dean of back at the apartment. Not too aggressive or angry, not as tense as it could have been, but far from comfortable. And a little bit like they were waiting for something.

Dean tried to ignore it. He couldn’t go back to sleep, he’d woken up too much, and he didn’t want to have another nightmare, anyway. So he sat, and he waited, distracting himself with everything from counting fence posts in a roadside field to trying to remember all the street names of the houses and buildings he’d cleaned out over the years. There were a lot.

And if he spent a lot of time staring at Alex as well, watching the way the shadows played over his face and listening out for his breathing, that was no-one’s business but his own.

When they eventually pulled off the highway for more gas, John started pestering Sam to switch with him. Dean kept his eyes on Alex while they bickered, but he only twitched a bit. He didn’t wake up, and under the lights of the fill up area, he looked more tired than anyone who was still asleep should. It made Dean frown, concerned, but it wasn’t like he was about to wake Alex up to ask him about it.

As the bickering dragged on, Dean thought about reminding Sam of his own offer to drive, but his father seemed determined and Dean could let it go. Finally, John settled into the driver’s seat, and they pulled out. Dean went back to watching Alex and the view out his window.

After a while, Dean added the back of his father’s head to the rotation of stuff he was staring at. He glanced between Alex and John, and it struck him how completely and utterly unlikely his current situation had been, and how _weird_ it was that John and Alex were sharing air like this. Who would have imagined it? With everything that’d happened, all the fights and abandonment, all that shit, who would have imagined it? Dean never had, not like this.

He mulled it over, staring out the window again. Was it even a good thing? Did Alex’s willingness to put up with Dean’s family mean they were closer, that Alex was actually really going to give him another chance?

Or was it just the easiest way to get to the weapon? Well, not the easiest, but probably the path of least resistance, the easiest way for Alex to get the demon – and the Winchesters – off his back and out of his life?

Dean was still frowning over that, when suddenly headlights flashed in his eyes and a horn blared too close to him. It was truck, going in the opposite direction on the other side of the road, and abruptly the memory of the last time the three of them had been in a car together slammed vividly into Dean’s brain. His recent nightmare made it worse – all the sensations of crashing, impact, breaking glass were magnified – and Dean had to struggle to control his breathing.

He’d been in the back, and Sam and John in the front, when— And now Alex was _in the car_ , that made it even worse, holy shit—

No, he wasn’t going to think about that, he decided, and shoved all thoughts of crashing out of his mind. It had been just a nightmare. And the three of them had been in the car together heaps of times before and nothing had happened. There was no reason for that last trip to sweep all the others away.

Dean also couldn’t afford to get freaked out like that. He needed to be able to drive, flinching every time he saw a truck would be such a bad habit to have.

Concentrating, he tried to focus. When had they been in the car together before that? When was the last time, before they’d been injured, before that motherfucker had trashed his Impala? It used to be his version of home, with the three of them in the car and John driving. It was how he’d grown up, it should feel as familiar and comfortable as breathing.

It wasn’t. It didn’t, and that was what had him so unsettled, he realised. He stared at the back of his father’s head in shock. That sense of home was gone, wiped away like it’d never been there, and it was almost more unsettling than the crash fantasies.

His childhood – such as it was – had been over far longer than he realised. The last time he could remember, the last time the three of them had done this, had been some time before Sam ran away to Stanford. They’d travelled to Idaho about a dead father haunting his wife and kids, and then driven across to New York. Then Sam left.

And okay, Dean had known that after that everything had changed. But he must have been holding out some hope that things could be okay, that they’d get back on track when they were all together again.

Apparently, you really couldn’t ever go home again.

Dean stared blindly out the window, allowing himself a single moment of wishing he could, wishing for home. But it was probably a lie anyway, he realised, because no-one else in this damn car had ever understood or felt the same about their family, and they never would. The loss was all his.

He managed to shove the feeling back down, trying not to let it make him feel cold. Then he felt his gaze drifting towards Alex, and he snapped it back to the window.

Alex wasn’t home, he told himself. There was no point even going there, because Alex might not even be around tomorrow. There was hoping for something, and then there was setting himself up for suicidal disappointment.

God, he needed to stop thinking about all of this crap. He shifted in his seat, pissed off that there were so few distractions in the van. He tapped his fingers on his thigh and silently hummed a few bars of Battery. Maybe he could try to remember all the lyrics to that Def Leppard song he’d caught a snatch of last time he’d listened to the radio. It had to be better than waiting for a feeling that was never going to come back.

After a few miles, he started mulling over the lyrics to the Sabbath b-side he could never remember properly. It would keep him from thinking about any of the important shit for a few more miles. Not that Sabbath wasn’t important.

Dean’d been glancing at Alex on and off, but he was looking out the window when Alex suddenly started to twitch and shift. Not much, and not so anyone who wasn’t hyper-aware of every move he made would notice. It was just a few shivers, but it made Dean turn to look again.

He watched, careful and wary, not sure if this was sleeping or waking up. Before he could decide, Alex’s eyes flew open and he inhaled sharply, jerking awake in a way that could only mean nightmare.

Dean froze. John and Sam stayed quiet and still, too. No-one said anything.

Alex breathed hard for a couple of minutes, staring around himself like he was remembering where he was. Dean watched confusion, worry and then resignation cross Alex’s face, and kept his own face calm, even though he was desperate to ask what was wrong, what the nightmare had been about, whether Alex was okay. He figured it wouldn’t help if he freaked out and started asking questions.

He didn’t glance at Alex’s shaking hands, either.

Alex met Dean’s gaze briefly, and Dean tried to look steady, calm, all that shit. Alex took a deep breath and looked away, started staring out the window. Dean told himself Alex was fine, he was going to be fine. It was just a nightmare.

Even if it was one that apparently took a few minutes to recover from. He listened to Alex take deep, deliberate breaths, watched him clench his hands to stop them from trembling. Dean recognised the controlled movements from when his own heart was rabbiting in his chest and he didn’t want anyone else to know about the heaving panic.

And he couldn’t ignore that. He couldn’t even pretend to, so he didn’t try. Alex was staring out the window so hard it was like he’d prefer to be out there in the dark, and he had one hand pressed against his mouth while he breathed carefully through his nose. His other hand, though, was down on the seat, clenched into a fist and resting on the upholstery in between them.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Dean dropped his own hand and inched it over until his fingers touched Alex’s.

Alex flinched, but he didn’t look over. He didn’t pull his hand away, though, either. Dean felt like a fool, but he kept his fingers there, lightly touching the side of Alex’s hand.

Then Alex’s fingers relaxed slightly, uncurling. He shifted them tentatively until they curled around Dean’s. He didn’t meet Dean’s eyes, just kept staring out the window, but when Dean took over the task of lacing their fingers together so they had a tight, secure grip on each other, Alex let it happen.

Dean felt more than saw Alex finally look over again, and he looked up from where he’d been examining their intertwined hands and trying to ignore the lump in his throat. Alex was studying him, looking for something, and just like that Dean felt pinned. All he could do was look back, though, take in the haunted look in Alex’s eyes and try not to flinch from it.

He wasn’t sure how long Alex stared at him, but eventually he must have found what he was looking for. He turned back to his window, but he didn’t pull his hand away.

Dean tried not to read too much into it. It was probably just about reassurance for Alex, having something warm and solid to hold onto, Dean told himself, and tried to ignore the way his heart was pounding. Another second to study the slant of Alex’s cheek and the back of his neck, and Dean went back to staring out his own window.

As they drove on in silence, the sky slowly started to lighten. The rain stopped, and clouds slowly cleared away until there were patches of stars between the streaks of grey.

They kept driving, stopping once at a diner for caffeine and bathrooms before the sun rose fully. Everyone was tired, so conversation was minimal. Alex hadn’t fallen asleep again and didn’t look like he was going to – not that Dean could blame him – but when they pulled out of the gas station and Dean dropped his hand nonchalantly back down onto the seat, Alex took hold of it again, no nightmares necessary.

Dean had to look away, to look out the window in the hopes of hiding the involuntary smile that he couldn’t quite keep off his face. It seemed insensitive; this was about reassuring Alex, giving him something to distract him from the bad dreams or whatever. Alex didn’t need to know he made Dean giddy like a twelve year old girl with a crush.

After a while, he managed to get control of himself and looked over at Alex again. The minivan must have been on a southerly stretch of highway, because the weak winter sun was coming in through Alex’s window. For a second, he was haloed, and Dean’s breath caught. It caught again for a different reason when the light shifted and harshly illuminated the dark circles under Alex’s eyes, and the way his brow furrowed in thought. He looked cold, too, like the early morning light wasn’t enough to warm him.

Dean turned away, went back to looking out the window. After a while, they passed a sign for an upcoming town, and Sam suggested pulling off to get some gas and something to eat. John seemed reluctant, but Dean hoped he’d change his mind because he’d just realised he was starving. Alex didn’t really respond, but he didn’t seem to care if they stopped.

He didn’t let go of Dean’s hand, though.

  


***

  


Dean was watching him. Again. Or _still_ was probably more accurate.

Xander stared out the window and flexed his fingers a little where they were held in Dean’s grip. He thought about the scrutiny, waited for the itch that had always come when he realised Willow or Giles or someone who knew what’d happened to him was staring at him.

And they had. Often. He’d never been sure if they were even aware of it, of how frequently they’d stared at him like they were waiting for him to crack, or have a total breakdown, or suddenly be magically ‘fixed’. But he’d noticed them doing it more times than he could count.

Dean’s watching, though, for some reason wasn’t having the same effect. It wasn’t making his skin crawl, wasn’t making him feel like he was doing something wrong or behaving some way Dean didn’t want him to.

It was more like Dean was just looking.

Xander didn’t shift his gaze from the window. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that, about Dean looking and _wanting_ to look. But he could probably ignore it. He had enough other shit to worry about.

Like the nightmare that he was pretty sure everyone had noticed. The total lack of reaction other than Dean had been a relief, but god, he shouldn’t have fallen asleep while it was dark; he knew better than that. He had nightmares if he slept during the day, too, but when it was dark it was always her, without fail. He was lucky it hadn’t been worse, that he hadn’t deafened them all when he woke up screaming.

And now it was morning. He’d survived the first night with them all, and if he kept perspective, a nightmare was on the lesser end of the scale of shit that could have gone wrong.

It didn’t hurt that Dean had been holding his hand ever since he woke up.

He flexed his fingers, warm where their skin touched. Dean’s grip was like an anchor, a relief after the way his nightmares made him feel like he was drowning. Having something solid to remind him that she wasn’t real was actually kind of amazing, almost like Dean had read his mind, and when Dean had met Xander’s gaze the look in his eyes told Xander that everything she said was a lie.

 _Dean doesn’t love you, Alex_. It was a lie.

It wasn’t okay, not yet and definitely not so soon on the heels of another dream. Except maybe someday it would be.

He shifted in his seat, and pushed that thought away. It was too soon to go there. He needed to work off the rest of his list first, and then maybe he’d feel capable of dealing with that. The warm spot in his chest might be getting warmer, but he was going to ignore it as long as he could. Dean wasn’t going to push, he reminded himself.

He believed it, too, but even taking the him-and-Dean problem out of the equation, there was still the weapon and the demon, and he had no way of knowing if he could handle any of it. Last night, he’d spent hours and hours while they were driving thinking about all the ways this whole situation could go wrong. He’d imagined everything from a huge argument, to all of them getting killed by the demon, to Xander killing _himself_ because of course the magical weapon had to be a goddamn _knife_.

He’d finally succumbed to nervous exhaustion and fallen asleep. And then came the nightmares.

And now he couldn’t quite shake that feeling of dread. It was like, the further they got from Cleveland, the less certain he was, the more that feeling of purpose he’d had when he talked to Faith had dissipated. He’d lied to her, he was a liar, and his goddamn list felt like a lie, too. He didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, all of his decisions were going to get him and probably everyone else _killed_ , and then it’d just be him and his nightmares left. Only he’d be dead.

He wanted to flinch from the thought, wanted to get away. He stared blindly out the window, trying to hold in the panic. He couldn’t let anyone else see it, he didn’t want them to know. Especially Dean. It was important that Dean didn’t know what a fuck-up Xander was, even if Xander wasn’t sure why he even cared.

Xander was used to failing people, to letting them down. To lying, to deflecting attention. He was used to not getting what he wanted, but it was harder when what he wanted was so close he could feel it looking at him. So close it was still holding his hand.

The sun finally rose, and Xander could look out at something other than darkness. The view itself wasn’t that fascinating, sometimes forest, sometimes fields, sometimes towns off away from the highway. But it kept slipping past, helped him focus on nothing. His panic slowly receded, leaving him feeling exhausted and brittle, more than usual.

Dean’s hand stayed in his, though. Xander figured he could let himself, that it would be okay just this once. He was too aware of how close they were, of how Dean was barely an arm’s length away, too aware of Dean’s body when he shifted, or his breathing when he wasn’t moving. But the comfort of it bolstered him against everything else, against the leftover fingers of his nightmare, against the demon looming on the horizon, against the way being in a confined space with John Winchester was a constant, low-grade irritation no matter what else was going through his head.

Dean’s presence was probably the only thing keeping him from going totally off the deep end, and that in itself was a problem. But hell, he decided, when had his feelings about Dean ever _not_ been a problem? At least it was something familiar.

He held in a sigh, and tried to relax. He’d be fine, or he’d keep telling himself he’d be fine, and whatever happened would happen. He had a list – it _wasn’t_ a lie – and he’d manage. He’d survive. And maybe grim determination would be enough. He couldn’t let her win, after all.

“Did you decide whether or not to pull off?” Sam suddenly said from the front, jarring Xander out of his thoughts. He looked around, surprised to see a mid-size town just off the highway.

“Yeah, I figure it’s time for breakfast,” John said, and Xander looked out the window again as the van headed towards the exit. He caught a glimpse of a sign that seemed to indicate they were somewhere in Missouri, and it wasn’t a hugely inspiring-looking place but it did make him think that he should probably pay more attention to exactly where they were on the map. It’d be ridiculous to wind up in the middle of nowhere with literally no idea where he was.

It would probably also be good to keep track of exactly how close they were to California. He hadn’t been back since Sunnydale, but _that_ was a problem he wasn’t going to think about until it slapped him in the face.

They drove through town, trawling what looked like a main road until they came to a gas station. It didn’t have a diner or restaurant attached to it, so when they’d filled up and paid, they pulled out looking for somewhere to eat.

What they found was the tiniest pancake place Xander had ever seen. It was crowded, the menus were kitschy, and apparently the place hadn’t kept up with the non-smoking trend because the air inside was grey and a little bit stifling.

Without warning, Xander’s long-abandoned desire for a good old-fashioned road trip came back to him. Once upon a time, places like this had been what he’d wanted most; anonymous, a bit dingy, and most importantly one of hundreds of stops he made as he drove. He’d never had a destination, back when he used to plan it out in his head during math class or on patrol. He’d just wanted to leave, and keep leaving, town after town, place after place.

He felt Dean’s eyes on him again, and tried not to care.

It was almost ironic, really. Dean was what had happened to him on his first ill-fated attempt at a road trip. And now he was what brought Xander out here on the actual road, finally, five years too late.

Xander distracted himself with choosing a calorie-laden pancake fest to consume. They were served pretty quickly, and Xander tried not to notice Sam’s look of amazement, then relief, as Dean tucked in hungrily.

After breakfast, Dean offered to drive, but Sam refused to let him.

“You were in a coma. Co. Ma. Don't think I've forgotten that you were supposed to go back to _hospital_ ," Sam bitched. "There’s no way I’m letting you drive.”

“Willow does good work, Sam, come on. I’ll be fine,” Dean wheedled.

“Forget it,” Sam said, sounding final. “It’s not going to happen. Try again tomorrow.”

Dean looked irritably to John for back up, but John just looked amused and didn’t say anything.

“Fine, have it your way,” Dean said, throwing up his hands. “Me and Alex will just sit in the back and sing the Song That Doesn’t End until your ears bleed, how does that sound?”

Xander snorted. He was too sated on pancakes and the way the smell of cigarettes was clinging to his jacket even though he hadn’t smoked anything to care about driving. And he’d almost forgotten how funny Dean was when he was irritated. They piled back into the slightly ripe-smelling van, Dean still muttering under his breath.

Xander took a moment, though, before getting in the car, to stare up at the wintery blue sky. His nightmare felt far away, he realised.

All he could do was hope it stayed that way.


	2. Not Dark Yet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from a song by Bob Dylan.

John wasn’t sure how long he’d been staring at the picture of the demon, the one in the Watcher’s Council book. It looked nothing like he pictured, nothing like he’d been told, and he had to keep reminding himself that it was the product of time, of the 1600s, and also the product of a teenage girl’s imagination. At least the rest of the story matched.

He’d opened the book across his lap again almost as soon as they left the pancake place they’d stopped in for breakfast. It wasn’t really telling him anything new, but he figured he could desensitise himself to the stabbing unfairness, the futile sense of injustice that threatened to overwhelm him whenever he thought about how long ago this book was written.

Too many demons to know that this one was worth hunting. Too few resources. They didn’t know. It wasn’t Giles’ fault, and he was helping now, anyway.

It was cold comfort. Mary _died_ because nobody read the book and connected it with what was going on, and John would probably never be able to accept that, or forgive it. But maybe he could lessen the sharpness of it.

Wincing and rubbing his eyes, he looked up just in time to see a road sign fly past. They were bypassing Oklahoma City. Which meant they had about twenty hours to go before they reached the weapon.

Then Alex’s cellphone trilled, and John held his breath.

He felt hyper-aware, suddenly, like all his senses had just amped into high gear. Alex was sitting directly behind him, and he had to look over his own shoulder to see the kid. He fought the urge for a while, then saw Sam glance anxiously in the rear view. The phone was still trilling.

John twisted around a little. Dean was watching Alex too, watching the kid frown at the screen on his phone. He seemed to be debating about whether or not he wanted to answer it, and John realised it probably wasn’t Giles.

Then Alex huffed a little and flipped the phone open. “Hey, Faith.”

Not Giles. John turned to face the road again and ignored the disappointment clenching in his gut. He wasn’t going to get impatient, he told himself. They were out on the road, they were travelling towards a weapon. They were doing something, even if it still felt like waiting.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Alex was saying, in response to whatever Faith had asked him. John listened idly, wondering exactly what Faith had to say to Alex. His contacts had told him that according to stories out of Sunnydale, she wasn’t friends with his people. Something must have changed.

Alex had refused to talk about her the previous evening, though, apart from assuring John she couldn’t help them with the demon.

“Nope, we haven’t heard anything yet. But Giles will call,” Alex said, and John wanted to grimace; it seemed everyone was eager to hear from Giles.

“Yeah, they are,” the kid said in response to whatever Faith’s next question was, and maybe John was projecting but he thought the kid sounded a little cagey, a little too neutral. If she was asking about them, he realised, Alex couldn’t answer. Not while they were right next to him in the car.

He wondered what Alex would have said if they weren’t there. He wondered how uncomplimentary it would have been. He wondered when Faith had become a close enough ally to ask a question like that.

With one last, “Okay, fine,” Alex said good-bye and snapped the phone shut on what had to be the briefest conversation from him that John had witnessed so far, the briefest by a long shot.

He must have realised they had all been listening – Dean was probably staring again – because he said, “Sorry, it was just Faith. She was checking in.”

John appreciated the politeness, but the apology wasn’t necessary. “That’s fine. Giles will call when he calls.”

No reply from Alex, except maybe a nod that John couldn’t see. Then Sam asked, “How long does this sort of thing usually take? Like, when should we start worrying that he _hasn’t_ called?” His tone was calm and reasonable, though, so the question didn’t sound demanding at all.

Alex hesitated, then said, “It’s hard to say. He said it would take a couple of days, but if they stop making progress and it’s going to take longer, he’ll probably call and tell me. And who knows, we’re making pretty good time. We might make it to LA first, and have to hang around and hide out.”

John grimaced at the prospect. There were too many people in LA, too many bodies for the demon and its followers.

“Faith said that Wood, one of the guys in Cleveland, is going to email me a copy of the incantation he used to exorcise the demon. It isn’t much, and apparently it might not work if the demon’s expecting it, which it will be now that we’ve used it once, but it’s something.”

“Good. It’ll be good to have,” Dean said, sounding subdued.

It seemed like all they could say on the subject for a while, though, and the car settled into silence again. John glanced over at Sam, who was frowning at the road ahead of them. Peripherally, he could see Dean, too, see the way he was still watching Alex carefully, enough to be just short of staring. John could tell he was still nervous, still afraid, and it made John want to promise things he knew he couldn’t guarantee.

He sighed, and flipped to a different page in the book. Even if the call hadn’t been Giles, it had still been a reminder of what they were doing out here and the danger they were in, and it’d definitely ratcheted up the tension in the air. John had to rein in his impatience again. Travelling was productive, he reminded himself again.

After a while, he gave up and shut the damn book, and stared out the window at the flat grasslands by the highway. He ran scenarios in his head, trying to come up with some ideas about whatever it was they were driving towards. A handover, or something, Alex had said.

Whatever he did, whatever the plans were, they had to keep Alex safe. Dean would never forgive him if something happened. Just like Sam shouldn’t.

John gritted his teeth against the wave of depression and kept staring out at the passing landscape. He wasn’t going to think about that, he was going to think about how good it would be to shoot the yellow eyed bastard, to finally destroy the son of a bitch once and for all.

Stab, not shoot. They were getting a knife, not a gun. Either would work. All he wanted was to see its face as it died.

They stopped again, for more gas. The tension carried through; even Alex seemed more wary of their surroundings and the strangers they crossed paths with.

Dean didn’t offer to drive this time, and the slight strain around his eyes made John hope he was going to try napping when they got back to the car. Alex offered, but John politely refused, not because he didn’t want Alex to drive but because he desperately needed something to do, something to occupy his brain and funnel some of the restlessness into, even if it was only driving.

They pulled out and hit the highway again. About an hour later, they passed into Texas.

And about an hour after that, a sudden bang from the engine snapped him out of his driving haze. The minivan engine started sounding like a lawnmower, splattering and grinding. John’s heart plummeted.

Miraculously enough, there was an exit only about fifty feet down the highway. John snapped the hazard lights on, hoped the cars behind him could see the smoke pouring out of the engine, and swung the wheel.

They made it off the highway, barely, and coasted down a one-lane road. The van slowed, engine revving and spluttering. John steered it off to one side of an intersection, and with one final whine, it cut out.

He gripped the steering wheel for a second, staring out the windshield at the smoking hood of the car and the barren, parched fields beyond it. It looked like they were literally in the middle of nowhere. In Texas.

 _God damn Bobby Singer_. John had never hated a car so much in his life.

  


***

  


Xander had been staring out the window, hypnotising himself again with the scenery as it slid past. His brain had gone in circles for a while, but then it was like he’d worried himself out or something, and slipped into a kind of exhausted, numb haze instead. It was good, it was almost like he was asleep but with less danger of nightmares. The car trouble jolted him out of his reverie, though, and he realised they were pulling off the highway into what looked like the textbook definition for the middle of nowhere.

When they finally coasted to a stop, he caught a glimpse of the look of dismay on John’s face and made a wild guess that this wasn’t good. Of course, the noise had been a big clue. He might know fuck all about cars, but he knew they weren’t supposed to sound like that.

“Oh, for the love of,” Dean muttered, frustration clear on his face. “What the fuck just happened?”

No-one answered, but they all piled out, including Xander. John inched up the hood, careful of the way the engine was still smoking a bit. He waved away the smoke that had collected, then took a look.

He winced, and leaned in to take a closer look. “Well, shit,” he muttered.

“What is it?” Dean asked, a grim look on his face. He stood to one side of his father, trying to see into the engine without getting in the way.

“Not sure. Damn thing’s still too hot to take a close enough look,” he said, then added, “But I think it might be one of the plugs.”

“Oh, Christ, really?” Dean said, obviously disgusted. “Why the hell did Bobby even give you this piece of shit?”

Sam had been glowering at the engine too, but he said, “It was all he had working. And to be fair, I’m pretty sure he only expected us to go as far as Cleveland. We didn’t tell him we’d be taking it a hundred miles an hour all the way to LA.”

“As if this ugly heap can do a hundred miles an hour,” Dean muttered, and stomped away round to the back of the van.

Xander kept his mouth shut and peered in past Sam, but it all just looked like engine to him. Hot, greasy, apparently broken engine.

“I’m not sure if the plugs are actually the problem,” John grumbled absently. “I need to check.” He pulled a grimy-looking bandanna out of one pocket so he could start unscrewing caps and bolts or something without burning his fingers. The grim look on his face had Xander wondering if this might be a bigger deal than just...something they could fix easily.

Sam gave the engine one last irritated glare, then went back to the passenger seat and pulled out the road map. Which Xander supposed was a good idea, because if they called AAA, they’d need to work out where they were.

He looked around, briefly. He hadn’t been paying attention again, but he thought this was Texas? They’d been in Oklahoma a couple of hours ago, but he couldn’t really be bothered stealing Sam’s map so he could check.

He didn’t want to hang over John’s shoulder, either, while he did whatever he was doing to the engine. And Dean was making clanking noises in the trunk, it sounded like he was sorting through the weapons, and since Xander wasn’t sure why that was necessary, he didn’t really want to get involved.

Better to stay out of the way, Xander decided absently, and he walked out into the middle of the intersection and looked around. Traffic was totally non-existent, so he stood there, staring at the flat, endless fields that surrounded them. He’d been staring at them from the car window, but they looked different from where he was standing. The sky seemed different too, now that he wasn’t looking at it through grimy glass. It stretched above his head, empty and clean and surprisingly blue for November.

It was weird, he decided. They’d gone from moving so steadily, town after town, mile after mile, to such an abrupt and complete stop. From the close confines of the car, and tension that he’d been trying so hard to ignore, to an open space where he could almost breathe easy.

Almost. Breathing easy felt too strange, too unfamiliar. Too weird.

He looked around again, trying to shake off the weird disconnect that had to be something to do with zoning out in the car for so long. It was almost like he really _had_ been asleep, and now he couldn’t quite wake up all the way.

There was nothing to see, though, nothing to look at, which probably wasn’t helping. Without cars and trucks still whizzing past a hundred yards away on the highway, the place would be totally and completely still. The intersection looked like no-one had driven through it in years. There were no street lights or stop lights, there wasn’t any trash on the side of the road, just dusty asphalt and scrubby brown grass. There were some very low buildings off in the distance, and some kind of irrigation structure stretched over some nearby fields, so he knew _someone_ must live around here. But there were no signs of life in the distance, and the machinery was still too.

If it wasn’t for John still cursing at the engine, it’d probably feel like the whole world was empty.

Empty and exposed, Xander suddenly realised. No buildings, no trees, no rocks big enough to hide behind. No cover. The minivan stuck out like a sore thumb, and they had nowhere else to hide, out here.

He repressed a shudder, and tried to ignore the paranoia. Nothing would happen, he told himself. They’d be fine. He wasn’t going to think about it. He eyed the irrigation system over in the field again and decided that if they were operating that kind of thing out here, surely there was a mechanic somewhere? Or at least mechanical parts that they could use to fix the car? Maybe all they needed to do was find a town.

He had a bad feeling that there might be some serious walking in his near future. The buildings didn’t look that far, but he could be wrong.

A chill breeze blew past, and he hitched his coat slightly tighter. Fortunately the sun was out, but the cold air was still crisp and mean. He thought about going back to the car for his gloves, but wrapped his arms around himself instead, covering his hands with his sleeves. He glanced back at the car. Dean had joined John in poking at the still-heated engine and he was glaring at something inside like he wanted to kill it. Sam was still scanning the map, looking up and down the road every so often.

Dean looked up from where he was leaning in under the hood just in time to meet Xander’s eyes. He said something quick to John and abandoned the engine, coming over to Xander with a hangdog look on his face.

“How does the car look?” he said, before Dean could get a word out. He could tell Dean was gearing up for another apology, but he didn’t want or need one. For added emphasis, he pasted on a friendly face to go with the question. Maybe he could head it off, ease Dean’s mind or whatever.

“Like shit. Dad thinks it’s one of the plugs, and even if it hasn’t fucked up the housing, we’ve gotta fix it before it does,” Dean said.

Xander made a face. He had no idea what any of that meant, but it sounded bad. Behind them, John swore. There was a loud sound of metal on metal, and Xander decided not to look over.

“You all right?” he asked instead, raising an eyebrow at Dean and forcing a half-smile across his face. Anxiety was pouring off Dean in waves, and it was making Xander nervous. Aside from the apology thing, he really wasn’t feeling awake enough to deal with any kind of fraught conversation at the moment.

Dean hesitated, but then he slumped a bit. He seemed to tamp down on whatever he was freaking out about, and then he said, “Sure. We’re stranded in the middle of nowhere. I’m awesome. You?” He seemed to mean it, although his mouth was still a tense, thin line.

Xander ignored it and shrugged. “Fine. Just taking in the Route-66 ghost town ambiance,” he added, nodding towards the vintage-looking road sign he’d noticed off to one side of the intersection.

Dean snorted. “I think you need buildings to be a ghost town.”

“Ghost intersection, then,” Xander amended.

Dean nodded sharply, and when he opened his mouth again, Xander could tell that the freak out was about to resurface. Not that it’d ever really gone away. “Look, I—“

A curse from John interrupted him, and Xander tried to hide a sick kind of relief. Dean shut his mouth into that thin line again, and they turned to see John not leaning over the hood but rummaging through the back of the van.

Dean, frowning, went back towards the minivan. “Dad? What is it?”

“It’s the plug, like we thought.” He kept looking in the trunk for a minute, then gave up with another curse. He came back around the side of the van, a dark look on his face. “We need parts and tools before we can get back on the road.”

“Damn. Lunch would be good, too,” Dean added sourly, and Xander suddenly realised it was almost two, they had no food with them, and for once, he was actually pretty hungry.

John shot Dean a look, but then Sam dug his head out of the map long enough to say, “We’re close to the next town. It’s probably only about a twenty minute walk from here.”

“Pray they have an auto shop,” John said grimly, exchanging a look with Dean.

“Maybe we can find some decent burgers while we’re there,” Dean added. Xander eyed him, not fooled by the talk of food. The tension radiating off Dean was rising as the conversation went on, and he knew Dean wasn’t taking the unexpected break in their journey well at all.

“Maybe you could stay here and rest,” Sam suggested acidly, before Xander could say anything.

Dean rolled his eyes. “You have got to get over this. I’m _fine_ , Sam,” he insisted.

Sam stared at him for a second, then turned to John. “Should we all go into town, or should we split up so someone can stay with the car? How much risk do you think there is of the demon finding us out here?”

John slowly wiped his hands on the bandana he’d been using, and thought about the question.

“Maybe we shouldn’t split up,” Dean said. “Or...or maybe Alex and someone else should stay with the car? The less people that see you, the better?” He directed the last part towards Xander, and Xander frowned. Why did it matter if people saw him?

While Xander was thinking about how Dean’s paranoia over the demon clearly far, far outstripped his own, John said, “I don’t think all of us should go. Either Dean or me, cause we know what we’re looking for. And Alex...I think Dean’s right. You should probably stay here with the car.”

Xander took in the uncertainty and anxiety still visible in Dean’s expression and decided he didn’t have the energy to care, let alone fight about this. Walk, stay with the car, it didn’t really make a difference to him.

And as exposed as he’d been feeling only a few minutes earlier, the idea that the demon would find him so far out in the middle of nowhere, here by the side of the road or even at some isolated rural gas station, seemed ridiculous. Willow had talked about radar, but she hadn’t been sure. Could it even find him? Would it even think to look out here?

Dean was worrying enough about it for the both of them, anyway.

“Okay, that’s fine,” he said with a shrug. John stared for a second, like he was surprised it was that easy. Why he thought Xander would want to walk miles and miles through Texas, Xander had no idea. “Who else is going to stay?”

As soon as he asked the question, he dreaded the answer. Shit. What if John stayed? Xander hated him much less than he ever would have expected – most of the time, anyway – but that didn’t mean he wanted to be stuck with the guy for hours while Dean and Sam went off looking for spark plugs and food. Being in the car with him was bad enough. Hopefully, Sam would make another fuss about Dean’s coma.

Sam didn’t disappoint. As if he’d read Xander’s mind, he said stubbornly, “I don’t think Dean’s well enough to go.” Dean rolled his eyes. “Dad, we can go do this while they stay here. You can get the parts and stuff, and maybe I can pick up some food?” Sam turned the statement into a question at the last minute when he remembered John hadn’t actually volunteered himself for the walk.

But John just nodded. “Sounds good. You boys should make a salt circle around the van and stay inside it, just to be on the safe side.”

Xander wasn’t sure it was necessary, but a light in Dean’s eyes probably meant they’d be doing it anyway. “We’ll stay armed and alert, don’t worry,” Dean promised.

Speak for yourself, Xander thought. Now that everything was settled, he was considering a nap. Hopefully he could retrieve some of his not-thinking vibe, and he was tired anyway. He always got lethargic after long flights or when he was trapped in a car for too long. Add in the nightmare, the tension, dealing with Dean’s guilt, and, oh yeah, the complete ridiculousness that was his life right at the moment... Yeah, fuck it, he was going to nap.

Luckily, Dean looked satisfied with how everything had turned out, too, so hopefully he’d give the apologies a rest and leave Xander alone for a while.

John nodded seriously. “The engine should have cooled off by the time we get back, and then we can do the work and get the hell out of here. We’ll go as fast as we can, so we can get this piece of crap fixed up before dark,” he added, casting a black look at the minivan.

Dean nodded sharply, then headed to the back of the van to dig around in the weapons again. John followed, probably keen to pick out his own. Or maybe make sure him and Sam had some water to take with them, or something else sensible like that.

Xander stood staring at the distant highway again, thinking about nothing, until he caught movement in his periphery and cast a wary look at Sam as he sidled up. The guy was too big to do anything stealthily, but he kept glancing between Xander and the back of the van like he was about to say something he didn’t want the others to hear.

Suppressing the urge to roll his eyes, Xander did him a favour and walked casually towards the front of the minivan. “Sam?” he asked as he went, tacitly inviting Sam to follow.

“Yeah, look, I don’t know...I don’t know if you want this,” Sam began awkwardly, once they’d come around the front like they were pretending to look in the engine. “But I found it a week or so ago, and I thought...Well, I don’t know.”

He’d pulled something from his pocket, and Xander took it without looking too hard at what it was.

Then he did see it, and his breath caught in his throat.

It was a polaroid. The picture was him and Dean, in a park, in the sunshine. They were sitting close, Dean was looking sideways at the camera and grinning like everything he’d ever wanted was right there in the frame.

Xander remembered the moment vividly, and almost crumbled under the sense memory. The feel of sun and the smell of cut grass. Dean’s warm skin, and the way he’d muttered something lame and hilarious in Xander’s ear while they were taking the picture. The weather had changed suddenly, raining heavily later in the day, and they’d laughed stupidly hard about getting soaked between the car and the door of their motel room. Xander remembered he’d wheezed out some lame joke about being all wet, and Dean had grinned and kissed him.

It had almost been like some stupid romantic movie, one that had only lasted a single day, and the memory of it struck Xander sharply somewhere beneath his ribcage.

“Where the hell did you get this?” he finally breathed out, unable to stop himself from staring at the photo, cradling it in his hands like it was fragile.

“I found it in the trunk of the Impala. I think it was hidden, it was like it fell out of somewhere,” Sam rambled. “Dean had been all upset after Sunnydale, and I didn’t really understand why he’d been hiding you away until I saw this. It was the first time I knew you were... _you_ , I guess. I was surprised, but I mean.” He paused, then added softly, “Dean looks so happy, you know?”

Xander tore his eyes away from the image long enough to catch Sam’s meaningful, earnest look. Anger flared, even as something else twisted in his stomach.

He schooled his face blank again, keeping an iron grip on his emotions. The last thing – the _absolute last thing_ – he was going to do was let Dean’s little fucking brother _guilt trip him_. Sam had no fucking idea what he was talking about, and if he thought some little stunt with a polaroid was going to achieve anything, he was about to learn a hard lesson.

Calmly, trying not to betray the incoherent spiel of frustration he really wanted to let go with, Xander tucked the photo in an inside pocket of his coat. “Thanks,” he said tightly.

Sam was staring at him, and when Xander didn’t say anything else, didn’t immediately break down and declare his undying love for Dean, he started to look nervous. And maybe he realised he’d overstepped, but Xander didn’t give a shit. He turned to walk around the other side of the van, away from Sam, away from the intersection, keeping his hands down by his sides so he wouldn’t rub at his forehead or his eyes or anything that would give away how fucking upset he suddenly was.

He took a deep breath and stared out at the fields, then crossed his arms as further insurance against the urge to freak the hell out. His head was pounding, all the muscles in his neck were tense to the point of screaming, and he wanted desperately to be numb again.

“Sorry,” he heard Sam say softly from up by the engine.

Xander had no idea if Dean and John had noticed, or would notice. He didn’t want them to. He didn’t want anyone to, he didn’t want _Sam_ to. “It’s fine, Sam,” he dismissed, hoping Sam would go away. But he couldn’t look over to see if it worked, so it was possible Sam just stood there staring at him until John said it was time to leave.

By then, Xander had managed to calm his racing heartbeat, and he came back to the car to act natural and say goodbye and good luck. He watched them walk down the road, Sam’s shoulders hunched in, and ignored the way it felt like the photo was burning a hole in his pocket.

Fucking Winchesters, he thought, half helpless, half infuriated. This road trip had been such a bad fucking idea.


	3. Greener With The Scenery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from a song by The Used.

Sam walked silently beside his father, a litany of _fuck, fuck, fuck_ running over and over in his head. He felt sick, he wanted to kick himself. God, he was such a moron – what if he’d just completely screwed up Dean’s chances with Alex?

He hadn’t been consciously trying to match-make. Or, he had, but he really hadn’t thought it through.

He had given Alex the photo because he honestly thought he might want it. Because Dean’d obviously had it for a while and it might be nice for them to switch. And yeah, he couldn’t deny that part of him had been hoping the photo would remind Alex that even though it was fucked up now, things with Dean could be awesome. That they’d been happy once, and maybe they could be again.

But in retrospect, that had been a pretty damn big assumption, that the photo would remind Alex of good times. Sam realised now that he’d based it purely on how they both looked, and he’d taken a serious gamble that it hadn’t been taken just before Dean left for the last time, or right before a big fight that Alex would remember. And the gamble had backfired. The look Alex had given Sam had been totally scary, like he’d known exactly what Sam had been trying to do and it was taking a lot of effort to hold on to his temper.

And Sam knew he should have minded his own business anyway. He shouldn’t have pushed, he should have stayed out of it and let Dean work it out for himself.

It was just so damn hard when Sam knew how badly Dean wanted this. When there was evidence like the photo that Dean had been happy, happier than Sam had ever seen him.

Alex looked happy in the photo, too. And hopefully he wasn’t the type to react to Sam’s mistake by taking his anger out on Dean.

After a while, Sam looked up from chewing his lip to find that the town that’d been hugging the horizon was now in front of them. Fields of scrubby grass and gravel lots were giving way to houses set back from the street, trucks, cars, and dusty-looking machinery. Not giving way very much, though; everything here gave Sam the sense of _space_. The houses were far apart, the streets were wide-set, and every other block seemed to be a field. And it was all low under the immense stretch of sky over his head.

They kept walking. No-one drove past – no-one local, no-one from the highway.

Finally they reached an intersection, which had a sign welcoming them to the town and another advertising a motel and grill. At least they’d have somewhere to stay if they couldn’t get the car fixed.

“What do you think? Straight ahead?” Sam asked, after considering their options for a second.

John squinted into the distance. “Yeah, straight. I think I see a gas station.”

Sam squinted too, and made out the familiar flat top of a fill up area. He nodded, and they started walking again in silence.

Silence. Sam wondered if he should have taken the opportunity to talk to John about anything. He’d been too wrapped up in hoping he hadn’t messed things up with Alex to even think about talking to his father.

Now that it occurred to him, what could he say? John had been behaving himself since they left Cleveland, and Sam...

Sam didn’t have anything to talk to him about. They were on the road, hunting the demon. It was the single goal he and his father had in common, but there wasn’t a whole lot to say about it that hadn’t already been said. There wouldn’t be anything new on that front until Alex talked to Giles.

And sure, Sam had a whole host of other issues he’d like to ‘discuss’ with his father, but nothing that couldn’t wait. Nothing that hadn’t already been waiting about four years. He could put it all aside until they got the weapon, until this was all over. Or until John misbehaved again. And John had seemed deep in thought for most of their walk as well anyway, so he’d probably appreciated the quiet anyway.

The gas station was up ahead, but the building just before it looked like an autoshop of some kind. John frowned heavily as they walked off the road and across the gravel, and he scanned the place carefully as they got closer. Sam fell in slightly behind him, dropping all his introspection so he could concentrate.

The autoshop was actually a machinists with a very unhelpful owner, so they tried the gas station. John smiled tightly at the guy behind the counter, and Sam kept his eyes trained warily on their perimeter.

Luckily, Lou – whose weathered face indicated he might have been working in this gas station when the highway went through the town instead of around it – didn’t take John’s wariness personally. He talked briefly to John about the parts they needed, then offered them a ride over to the auto shop across town and another back out to the minivan.

Sam was so relieved he could have kissed him, not that Lou would probably appreciate it. But beneath all his other concerns, anxiety had been clawing at Sam’s stomach ever since they left the minivan.

He knew it made more sense to split up, to keep Alex hidden as much as possible even out here in the middle of nowhere. And he knew that Alex and Dean were probably safe enough inside the salt. But logic didn’t really help; being separated from the others really freaked him out. He’d had to work hard not to what-if the situation.

What if there was another possessed trucker, for example? Sam didn’t think a salt line could stop a semi-trailer.

Lou came around from behind his counter and ushered them out the door so he could lock up. John was saying how much he appreciated it, but Lou was waving them off. “It’s not like I’m busy, and you folks could use the help. It’s no skin off my nose.”

There didn’t seem to be much to say to that. John raised an eyebrow at Sam, and they piled into Lou’s pick-up. He flipped on the radio, to what seemed to be the local gospel station, and they set off.

After a few moments, Lou asked companionably, “So, what brings you all out here? You live nearby, or are you going somewhere?”

“We’ve got the whole family travelling through to Arizona. Got a brother out there with a job for my boy here,” John said, easily slipping into the role of the doting father.

Sam looked down sharply, focusing his gaze on his knees and gritting his teeth.

“And you up and went with him, instead of just sending him by himself?” Lou was saying, disbelief in his voice but with a friendly edge to it, like he was surprised but only laughing at them a little.

“Well, I’m going to help him get set up, and then I’m coming back. And my other son and his buddy are hitchin’ a lift so they can take in the Grand Canyon.” John didn’t miss a beat, and his voice was even and calm, still friendly. Sam had always known John was a good liar, but it’d been a while since he’d seen it first-hand. It was impressive, in a twisted way.

“Of course, that makes sense,” Lou nodded. “Grand Canyon could be nice this time of year.” Then he turned the wheel, easing the truck into a driveway. Sam looked up in surprise. He’d been watching the road a little, watching the houses slide past them, but they hadn’t been in the car for five minutes. They were there already? They could have walked.

Small town America, he thought, staring at the sign for the auto shop and feeling slightly bewildered. He shook it off and got out, following his father. The sooner they got this done, the sooner they could get back to the others, and the sooner they could get the car fixed and get back out on the road.

  


***

  


Xander stared out at the horizon. He shifted a little, trying to get comfortable, then shifted again for no particular reason. He flicked his gaze over to Dean, to the cars on the highway, back to the horizon. It felt like restlessness was eating him up.

He hadn’t even bothered trying the nap thing; he’d taken one look at the back seat of the car and known he wouldn’t even be able to close his eyes. Dean was still watching him like a hawk, with that same combination of protectiveness and guilt that was always always _always_ in his eyes, only this time it was making Xander edgy. Edgier.

He’d paced back and forth beside the car for a while, getting to the rim of the salt circle like he was testing the boundaries. It wasn’t a real boundary, of course, he could cross it whenever he wanted, but he’d thought about the fuss Dean might make and couldn’t be bothered.

He’d tried standing still, but every time he crossed his arms he wanted to fidget and whenever he uncrossed them his fists kept clenching and unclenching. He’d looked around; there were no rocks to throw, no wood to carve. He could probably sacrifice a stake, but he wasn’t sure what he’d make. He wasn’t sure if he trusted his hands to hold a blade right now anyway. He’d wondered briefly if research might be a good idea, but decided pretty quickly that he wasn’t that desperate.

Eventually, he’d heaved a sigh, given in, and gone to sit on the rear bumper of the minivan, next to Dean. Dean had been using the floor of the trunk as an uneven workspace while he cleaned the shotguns, the big rear door swung open above his head. It wasn’t great for dealing with weapons, but it wasn’t a bad spot to sit, not too uncomfortable, and at least it was some place other than the car’s seats.

Dean had looked over when Xander sat down, but Xander hadn’t meet his gaze. He’d wanted to be able to sit there and stare off into space, but couldn’t quite manage it, so now he was trying to keep the shifting and twitching he wanted to do to a bare minimum.

After a while, Dean finished up with one of the shotguns and cleared it all away. The quiet was still itching under Xander’s skin, but he tried to make it less obvious that he couldn’t sit still. He wasn’t totally sure what the cause was; maybe it was the way the photo from Sam felt heavy in his pocket, maybe it was Dean’s constant guilt, maybe it was the tension that was still – always – there between the two of them. Maybe it was just that from where he was sitting, he could hear Dean breathe.

Whatever the reason, he couldn’t avoid the mess that was currently cluttering up his brain. Not on his own, at least.

“So,” he said, breaking the silence. “Texas is nice.” And that was possibly the lamest conversation opener in the history of the world, even between him and Dean, and they’d once had a two-hour conversation about Magic Fingers. But fuck it, Xander wasn’t about to be choosy. Too much longer without distraction and he might start back in on the endless lying-versus-trying-to-fix-it loop of moral uncertainty again.

Dean, who’d been quiet and fairly still since he put the guns away – a total contrast to Xander’s shifting irritation – shot him a quick glance but looked away again immediately. “Right,” he said, apparently talking to his feet. He’d been staring at Xander for a while, but then he’d suddenly stopped, and Xander hadn’t really thought about it until now.

“Food’ll be good,” he tried, getting just a little bit desperate. What the hell did it take to start a conversation around here?

“Yeah,” Dean said, biting the word off like he could barely bring himself to say it.

Oh, great, Xander thought, wanting to roll his eyes. Dean had been staring at him all day like he was on the edge of saying something important, but he picked now to start blanking out? He couldn’t actually bring himself to make meaningless conversation while they waited?

Xander was just about to say something else when Dean took a deep breath, stood up and said, “Look, I’m sorry, alright?”

Xander paused, startled. What the hell was he apologising for _now_?

Dean went on, and he was a little more upset than Xander could think of a reason for. “I’m sorry there’s no food, I’m sorry we’re trapped in the middle of freaking nowhere, I’m sorry the goddamn van broke down. I’m sorry for whatever the fuck Sam said to you to make you angry, but mostly I’m sorry we ever left Cleveland and got ourselves into this damn situation in the first place,” he said, words running together, voice rising until it was almost a yell. He was visibly helpless and frustrated, and possibly a little scared.

Xander said nothing; his restless, formless irritation had been totally derailed, and it took him a few seconds to work out what was going on. After a moment, he realised his lame attempts at conversation had been mistaken for accusations, but Dean went on before Xander could protest.

“I know, okay?” he added anxiously, studying Xander. “I know you’re pissed at me, and I’m just. I’m just sorry.” The surge of remorse apparently subsided into defeat, and Dean deflated visibly.

Xander stared at him for another second, slightly shocked by _how_ deflated Dean was. Then he slumped too; was a meaningless conversation, one that wasn’t emotional or fraught with landmines, really too much to ask? “Jesus, Dean,” he said tiredly.

“I know, okay?” Dean repeated, still sounding far too guilty for what they were talking about.

“No you don’t,” Xander replied, frustrated. “I’m not pissed at you. Why would I be pissed at _you_?”

Dean gave him an incredulous look. And maybe that was fair.

“Yeah, well, _that_. Sure,” Xander said, dismissing their shared history with a wave of his hand. “But I’m not pissed about all this other stuff, not at _you_.” He was too distracted and restless to concentrate long enough to be pissed about it, for one thing. In the scheme of things, in the midst of all the other shit piled up all over his life at the moment, the car breaking down was not even on his radar. He’d almost been enjoying the break from endless hours in the back seat.

“Why not?” Dean demanded, some of the defeat leaving his voice. “ _I’m_ pissed about most of it. We’re in a goddamn minivan,” he said, throwing one had back behind them to indicate the interior, the engine, the whole smelly vehicle. He looked like he wanted to kick something.

“And? What? This isn’t how you wanted it to go?” Xander asked, almost amused.

Dean snorted. “Not that I actually had a plan or anything,” he admitted bitterly, staring down at his boots again.

And Xander couldn’t believe he was even saying this, but he was. “It’s okay, Dean, seriously. Shit happens.” When that didn’t seem to make Dean feel any better, Xander added, “If you remember, leaving Cleveland with your dad and Sam was actually my idea. So you can blame me for being stranded in Texas if you want to.”

He’d been shooting for amusement, but he must have missed, because his words had a different effect than he would have expected. Instead of laughing, instead of agreeing that it was all Xander’s fault, Dean’s head shot up and he frowned. “I don’t want to blame you for anything,” he said, a soft, hurt edge on his voice that affected Xander like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Gritting his teeth, he snapped, “Well, I’m not about to blame you for every little thing that goes wrong, either. I’m not actually a complete asshole.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Dean said. Great, now he sounded hurt _and_ surprised.

Xander braced himself and met Dean’s eyes. The hurt was there, Dean’s jaw clenched tight around it. And as fucking infuriating as it was that this was coming up now, right when Xander was least interested in dealing with it, he knew he couldn’t let it go on.

He looked down at his feet and clenched his hands on the bumper of the car. He had to force himself to stay calm, to not just rage incoherently about the many and varied ways that Dean was making him crazy.

“I know what you meant,” he said carefully, after a few more minutes of trying to find his zen place. “It’s fine. I just...I need you to let it go, okay? Don’t apologise for every little thing, it doesn’t help, it’s mostly not necessary, and overall it just makes me want to punch you in the face again.”

Dean stared intently at Xander, studying his face for clues or something. Xander waited it out, keeping his eyes on his boots and silently awarding himself a medal for his superhuman levels of patience. He was glad when Dean stopped looking so stressed he was about to have a heart attack, though.

“You mean that?” Dean asked, subdued.

On reflex, Xander looked up at him, and it was sick, it was pathetic, but the sight of Dean’s very obvious unhappiness at the way things were going was enough to make a bit of real forgiveness ease the rest of Xander’s anger. As much of a doormat as it made him, he couldn’t bring himself to even try to hold on to it.

“Of course,” he said. He didn’t even try for a smile, he knew he wouldn’t be able to pull it off. But he meant what he said, which would hopefully be enough.

He held Dean’s gaze as long as he could, then finally looked away. Without meaning to, he shifted again and of course a corner of the polaroid dug into his skin. It made him twitch a little, but he didn’t move it. He didn’t want to draw attention to it.

“Thanks.” Dean finally said. His tone of voice was almost painfully grateful, and it jerked Xander back out of his thoughts. He didn’t look up, although he suspected that if he could have mustered up the courage to look Dean in the face again, he’d see that warm look, the one that was so damn confusing.

“Anytime,” he said simply. He wasn’t brave enough to look, but it was sort of exhilarating to know it was there. The spark in his chest started glowing again.

The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes, and Xander took the opportunity to think about warmth and all the ways it was fucking him up today. It’d made his restlessness subside, it made the exhaustion that dogged him relax a bit as well. It was probably just another kind of addiction, he acknowledged tiredly, and it was going to burn him one way or the other.

But it was there, warmth where he’d been cold for so long. He breathed deep again, trying to bring himself to ignore it. But Dean was watching him, again or still, watching so close he could practically feel the gaze on his skin.

And before Xander could really decide to move, to put a stop to whatever it was that was making him think in metaphors, Jesus Christ, Dean apparently decided the peace between them meant he had permission to speak.

“So,” he said. “Faith. What’s the deal there? She’s friend of yours now?”

Xander stomach jumped into his throat for a second, but he forced himself to stay calm. He eyed Dean carefully. As far as conversation openers went, this was definitely an improvement on another apology, and despite his knee-jerk reaction, Xander could talk about Faith. He could control a conversation about her.

It _could_ have been an effort at a neutral topic. Dean _looked_ like he was trying to be neutral.

However, the previous evening, in the car, he’d asked what Xander and Faith had argued about. Xander had snapped that it was none of his business, and Dean’d looked...stung. So while Xander wanted to believe this was neutral, he wasn’t totally sure where it could lead.

Dean noticed his hesitance, and said, “I’m just asking. I’m curious, but we can talk about something else if you want. I’m not gonna ask for your secrets.”

He sounded discouraged, and Xander sighed. “No, no. Yeah, she’s. She’s a friend, now, I guess. An ally.” He could talk about Faith. He wasn’t going to discuss their argument, but he could tell Dean other stuff.

“Last year, we...we needed her,” he said, after he’d worked out a good tack to take. “We needed another slayer, we needed all the allies we could find. Hell, we even had Andrew working for us. So, since Faith had already broken out of prison to help Angel with something, we asked if she wanted to come to Sunnydale.” He paused. “Well, by ‘we’, I mean Willow, Willow asked. But yeah, anyway, Faith helped.”

“And she’s still helping?” Dean asked. He really did just sound curious. Xander relaxed a little more; there was no motive here, Dean wasn’t fishing.

“Yeah, she’s been involved in a few of the different operations, recruiting and training the girls, monitoring the hellmouth, going out on jobs, all of that. Internationally, too, she was in Africa for a little while when I was there.”

“You don’t mind working with her?”

Xander shrugged. “I’ve worked with worse. Even with all the shit that’s gone down in the past, at least Faith’s honest about her mistakes these days.” As soon as he said the words, it struck him how much that was something he couldn’t quite say about himself right now.

He stopped, whatever else he’d been going to say gone out of his head. Dean seemed to think it was a loaded statement as well, and didn’t reply.

He was lying for a reason, he tried to remind himself. It was better this way, no matter how much it made his stomach twist, because this way no-one else had to worry. This way he was only hurting himself, not other people. And he didn’t want to freak out everyone he knew.

 _Potentially_ hurting himself, he corrected internally, a wash of cold going down his back. It wasn’t like he planned it.

And that thought ricocheted, became the bottom-line of _Dean doesn’t love you, Alex_ and made a mockery of the moment of warmth he’d just had. He concentrated on schooling his face – the last thing he wanted was Dean asking him what was wrong – and ignored the way the sunlight suddenly felt even weaker, the way the exposed feeling was back.

All his warmth had vanished, and Xander hugged his jacket around himself again.

  


***

  


Dean stared at Alex, watching the disturbed look that’d flashed over his face disappear like it’d never been there. It was followed by that blankness, that thousand-yard-stare Dean had seen on Alex’s face before and _hated_.

He dropped his eyes back down to the bitumen, thinking about mistakes and double meanings. What was Alex implying? Was he talking about their history, or something else?

The problem was, Dean decided slowly, Alex had too many secrets for Dean to guess accurately. Too much history, too many dark things that’d happened to him. He could be telling Dean that he’d work with anyone, even Faith – even Dean – if circumstances were dire enough. He could be talking about Buffy, or Willow, or one of the other people he’d worked with.

He could be talking about Dean, or he could be talking about himself. Or the thousand yard stare could be about something else completely, some other mistake.

Something cold clenched in Dean’s gut at the thought of all the options. There were too many silences in Alex’s past, too many things Dean knew he knew nothing about.

He almost wanted to ask. But he couldn’t; there was no way that conversation would end well. Plus, Dean might be wrong about the hints Alex seemed to be dropping, and then he’d just look like he was...well, pushing.

Without looking up, he eventually asked, “How are your stitches?” He knew it came out of the blue, but he didn’t want to hear another word about Faith and he didn’t want them to subside into another tense silence. He’d almost forgotten about the stitches, but suddenly remembered that they were a perfectly neutral way to change the subject.

They weren’t a secret, for one thing. And Dean didn’t think there were any landmines there.

Alex didn’t answer for a moment, and when Dean looked up, he’d pulled his jacket on a little tighter and his face looked pinched.

“You alright?” Dean asked. “You cold?”

Alex looked at him, startled, like he’d somehow forgotten Dean was there. “No, I’m fine.” Dean waited. “What?”

“Your stitches,” he repeated patiently. “They okay too?”

“Oh.” He’d either not heard Dean the first time, or he’d totally forgotten he even had stitches. “Fine,” he said. “I can barely notice them. You did a good job.”

Dean ignored the praise in favour of asking, “And you’re okay otherwise, right? No bruises came up overnight? I mean, I know you said you were fine, I just—”

“I’m good, Dean,” Alex interrupted. Thankfully he had a slightly pained smile on his face, mixed with a little more of that look like he thought Dean was endearing rather than annoying. Which was a relief, because once Dean had started asking questions it was hard to stop, and he knew the overprotective thing was a fine line.

Knowing didn’t stop Dean from wanting to wrap Alex up in goddamn cotton wool or bubble wrap or something, though. The ever-present sense of _hurt_ around Alex, the way he seemed so haunted and weighed down, just made it worse, made Dean want to protect him even more, even though he knew it was impossible.

He didn’t have the right, he knew that. But also...he was too late. Alex was already hurt, and the only way to fix it would be to go back in time and goddamn _stay_.

“Good,” Dean managed, aiming for neutral despite the mix of heartache and resignation currently twisting in his chest. Since he couldn’t actually time travel, the only option was to respect the boundaries Alex drew. If he needed to keep secrets for a while, Dean had to try and accept it, even if not knowing what was wrong was just about killing him.

They sat in silence for a few moments, and Dean tried to think of something else to say. He wondered where John and Sam were, whether they’d been lucky with the parts. Hopefully it wouldn’t take too much longer. It’d be good to get back on the road before sundown.

Sam. Dean glanced at Alex, unsure whether he should ask. It might not be the neutral topic he wanted, and he didn’t want any more walls to go up.

But if it was none of his business, Alex could tell him. And if it was something Dean actually _should_ apologise for, he was damn well going to. “What did Sam say to you, before? Did he say something to piss you off?”

He regretted it as soon as he got the words out, because sure enough, something else in Alex’s face closed off. Shit, Dean was so sick of fucking up, even if this time it was totally and completely Sam’s fault.

After a moment, Alex cleared his throat, then pulled something from his pocket, handing it to Dean. “He just wanted to give me this.”

Tearing his eyes from Alex’s face, Dean stared at the photo.

Then, when he realised what he was actually looking at, he couldn’t help but stare a little harder.

It was a polaroid, _the_ polaroid. It was the only image he’d ever had of them. The only _proof_ , aside from the necklace he never took off. He thought it’d been destroyed along with the Impala. He thought he’d never see it again.

“Holy shit,” he said. Then it was his turn to clear his throat, to try and get the wistful out of it.

“Yeah,” Xander huffed, still guarded and tight around the mouth. “Sam’s not very subtle.”

It took a couple of seconds for the warning bell to get really loud in Dean’s mind. Then he forced his voice to be calm when he said, “Yeah, sometimes he’s really not.” He tried not to panic. “It doesn’t... You don’t have to listen to him,” he added, and the words were hard to get out because he desperately, desperately wanted Alex to listen to him.

“I know that,” Alex said, then hesitated. Fuck. If Sam had totally screwed up Dean’s chances here, Dean was going to kill him. But all Alex said was, “It’s a nice photo.”

Dean studied him, trying not to let hope leap in his chest like it wanted to. Alex’s voice was too guarded, too careful. Dean knew he shouldn’t pin anything on it, there was no point setting himself up for disappointment. He had to stop reading into everything Alex said, it was only going to drive him crazy.

But he couldn’t seem to stop himself. “Do you remember when we took it?”

His heart was in his throat. He had absolutely no idea what Alex would say.

Alex just raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, yeah, I was there,” he said, like he thought Dean was a moron.

The moment hung between them for a second, still and strung with tension. Then Alex went on, voice a little quieter.

“We went to the park because I told you I was sick of only seeing the inside of motel rooms whenever I came to San Francisco,” he said, and there might have been an undercurrent of amusement, of something relaxed and genuinely nostalgic in his voice. “I wanted to see just a little bit of the city, and I made you come with me. You bitched the whole drive over there, didn’t stop until I bought you a hot dog.”

Alex paused, and Dean said, “Yeah, that sounds like me.” He looked away too, looked down at the photo in his hands and tried to match up Alex’s version with his own memories.

They were quiet for a moment, then Alex cleared his throat and added softly, “I remember we walked around for a while before we found that picnic table. We saw the guy with the polaroid camera nearby and paid him five dollars to use it for the photo, and then we sat on the table in the sun for about two more hours talking about Metallica and Johnny Cash and cheesy sci-fi movies.”

Dean couldn’t move, could hardly breathe. He remembered all of it, suddenly, more details coming to him while Alex spoke, and he found himself unable to take his eyes off the bright, shining couple in the photo. It almost didn’t look like them anymore – too perfect, too happy. That day felt so far away, and Dean suddenly thought it might just break his heart.

Then Alex said, even softer, “We held hands the whole time, and we weren’t afraid of anything.”

Alex looked at him, a little uncertain, and Dean looked back. He knew his heart, what he was hoping for, everything he wanted, was visible on his face again, but he couldn’t keep it in.

But then reality came back like a punch, as Alex’s words really registered with Dean. He wanted to believe them, he really did. As beautiful as Alex’s version was, though, it was wrong.

Eventually, he managed, “Yeah, I wasn’t afraid.” His stomach was sour with regret, and even though he didn’t want to go on, he felt compelled to be honest.

“Dad had called me that morning, and he was on the other side of the country. I’d driven through Palo Alto to spy on Sam before I met up with you, and I’d worked out he was studying for finals. I figured he probably wouldn’t be making any random trips to SF, so he wouldn’t accidentally catch us.” He hesitated, unable to understand why he was reminding Alex of all of this, why he was sabotaging all his chances of winning Alex back. But the compulsion was still there, and he figured he might as well confess it all, really dig himself in deep. “And I’d seen at least eight other couples like us in the park too. Some of them were flat-out making out.”

“All that, and sitting close and holding your hand was as brave as I could get.”

Dean kept staring at the photo, bitter and furious with himself, until he finally tore his eyes away. He gritted his teeth and stared out at the horizon, guilt and regret at his own stupidity burning in his throat. What the fuck did he even bring this up for? He’d remembered it as a good day, but that was only on the surface. Underneath, it was still all the same old paranoid shit, the reluctant stuff he hated himself for. There was no part of their past that he hadn’t tainted with it.

A movement in his periphery and a tug on the photo made him jump, but it was only Alex taking it back out of Dean’s tense fingers. Dean watched him for a second – he looked guarded, but Dean recognised the way he rubbed his eyes and knew he was tired as well – and held his breath.

This had to be it. This was when Alex told him no, said he couldn’t do it. And the only person Dean could blame was himself.

“Do you remember,” Alex began, then stopped. “Do you remember the trip after that, one of the other times we went out in public together? We went to a club?” At Dean’s confused nod, he went on, mouth still tense with how much he obviously didn’t want to talk about this.

“We slayed a vampire out back in the alley that night, remember? And there was a guy we’d saved, who asked us if we were a couple of vigilantes,” he said. “I remember insisting to that guy that you and me, we weren’t a couple.”

Alex handed him the photo again and said, “I saw those other couples in the park too, Dean. And just because us being together wouldn’t have made me lose anything that wasn’t already lost, it doesn’t mean I was any better than you about all of it. I said _we_ weren’t afraid that day. It wasn’t just you.”

He stopped for a minute, then added, “It was a good day anyway, you know?”

There was something wistful in his expression that tore at Dean’s heart. He sat there, frozen, as Alex slid off the bumper, and walked away around the side of the minivan, leaving Dean alone with the photo. His mind race, trying to process what had just happened. And even though he wasn’t there yet, wasn’t sure he’d really gotten it all, he wanted to disagree.

It was him, he was the one that sucked at it, Alex was blameless, he’d been out to all his friends, and even when he was cautious of random strangers, he’d been so much better at it than Dean.

Right?

Eventually Alex came back, and Dean couldn’t think of a thing to say. He watched Alex sit down next to him again, watched his calm expression as he looked around at the fields around them. It felt a little like Dean was seeing him for the first time.

Alex wasn’t pissed about the stupid minivan. Or about Texas, and everything that’d happened since Giles first told them about the weapon. Which, okay, Alex wasn’t an asshole, he wouldn’t blame Dean for things that were beyond his control.

But now Alex also thought Dean shouldn’t blame himself for being a total fuck-up in the park, and every other time they went anywhere?

Dean could admit that this was real life, and Alex wasn’t a saint. He could even remember a few times when Alex had been the scaredy cat, the one who didn’t want to go to bars or didn’t want to touch Dean in public in case someone saw. They’d both been careful and uncertain at different times, insecure about what it would mean if random people on the street knew about them.

And maybe Dean _had_ forgotten some of that in his haze of regret. Maybe he _had_ forgotten that Alex wasn’t flawless and untouched, that he’d made mistakes and acted rashly sometimes when they were together before. The harder Dean thought about it, the more he suddenly worried that the Alex he’d been remembering was some kind of warm, perfect, ideal, and the reality was totally different.

Dean looked at the reality some more, taking in the tiredness and the slightly broken look in his eyes, and he knew the perfect Alex would never exist. Had never existed. And he knew he didn’t care.

The Alex sitting right in front of him was the one he wanted to be with, he knew that. Imaginings aside, he’d only ever wanted the real thing, no matter how bitter or tired or angry at Dean he was.

And aside from all of it – Dean had to shake himself a bit, because the stupid glowing feeling he got when he thought about Alex tended to take over and turn his entire brain to mush, no matter what he’d been thinking about – when Dean compared a few moments of paranoia, a bit of _caution_ , to the way Dean destroyed their entire relationship, it didn’t really stand up.

Dean was still the fuck-up here, he knew that. He’d find some way to make up for it, even if it took the rest of his life.

Alex, oblivious to the revelations going on in Dean’s brain but probably aware of the staring, finally looked over and raised an eyebrow. It was enough to make Dean duck his head, embarrassed. He still couldn’t think of a thing to say, couldn’t come up with words to explain what he was thinking. There was too much regret and apology and hope to make sense of, even to this new, realer version of Alex.

His skin prickled. Alex was the one staring now, and Dean had a bad feeling that some of what he was thinking was visible on his face. He didn’t look up, though, couldn’t risk it. And Alex didn’t say anything, but suddenly, without warning, he moved. He slid a duffle that had been sitting between them on the bumper out of the way, and slid across to sit next to Dean.

Actually next to Dean. Their legs were practically touching.

Dean forgot how he was tongue-tied, forgot how much he didn’t want the scrutiny, and stared at Alex. Alex, who was sitting about four inches away instead of four feet.

Alex stared back. And Dean knew there was probably still way too much hope on his face, but for a moment, he didn’t care. Somewhere in the jumble of electrified circuits he sometimes called his brain, somewhere in the mess that’d just been totally derailed by Alex’s sudden proximity, one thought was clear.

Secrets didn’t matter. Alex could tell him or not tell him, whatever he wanted. Dean would wait, that wasn’t even the point.

The point was the look in Alex’s eyes when he met Dean’s. It was like he was trying to find something in Dean’s expression. A look like... Dean couldn’t even find the words for what it was, but he couldn’t imagine Alex looking like that at someone he didn’t trust.

Dean looked away quickly, feeling a little bit overcome.

After a moment or two, he got his heart rate back under control. A moment or two after that, Alex reached over for the polaroid again. He looked down at it for a while, long enough for Dean to safely raise his eyes and linger his gaze over the curve of Alex’s ear, jaw, throat. He wanted desperately to follow the same path with his fingers.

He couldn’t, so he looked away. Alex stayed beside him, flipping the photo between his fingers while they sat there in the late afternoon sunlight. They stared out at the flat landscape silently.


	4. Enter Sandman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from a song by Metallica. Thanks for reading!

Sam’s foot tapped. He tapped and tapped. He couldn’t quite make himself stop, even when it seemed to be making the other patrons – all two of them – in the diner and grill down the road from Lou’s gas station a little nervous.

They’d been gone from Alex and Dean for over an hour, and Sam was freaking out more and more. And to the outside observer, John might look calm, composed, where he sat on the other side of the table as they waited for their take out, but Sam had noticed the clench in his jaw, so he knew he wasn’t the only one who was freaking out over how long this was taking.

They were finally served, and paid with the minimum of fuss. Lou was waiting for them back at the gas station, with the cardboard box of tools and spare parts they’d purchased in the bed of his pick-up. He nodded as John ducked his head into the shop, locked up again, and they got in the car.

Sam wanted to drive, wanted to floor the pedal, wanted to push the engine. They needed to get back. What if something had gone wrong while they were gone? What if they got back only to find blood, bodies, or worse, nothing? What if—

He interrupted himself, ruthlessly cutting off the line of thought. They’d be fine. They’d be fine, they’d fix the car, and they’d all get the hell on the road again. They were only two minutes down the road anyway; in a matter of moments, Sam would know one way or the other.

Not that there’d be anything wrong. They’d be fine. It’d be fine.

Sam stared out the window, trying to ignore it when his foot started tapping again.

It’d be fine, he told himself.

And it was. Dean came around the side of the minivan almost as soon as they were in sight – probably once the truck got close enough to hear – and Sam knew just from the way Dean was walking that nothing was wrong. Alex followed him around to meet them, and he seemed fine, too.

Unless they were both possessed, and pretending.

But they couldn’t be possessed if the circle was still intact. They pulled up, and John distracted Lou while Sam checked. The circle was fine. He looked up to catch a raised eyebrow on Alex’s face as Dean and Alex watched what Sam was doing.

“Christo,” he whispered. The eyebrow went up a bit further, but other than that, nothing happened.

Everything was fine.

“You satisfied we’re not evil?” Dean asked casually. He didn’t _sound_ pissed off, but there was a slight edge to his voice. Sam suddenly got a bad feeling that Dean knew about the photo, that Alex had told him what Sam had done.

“Just checking,” Sam mumbled awkwardly.

Dean stared him down for a minute, then started when Alex said casually, “Probably for the best, I guess. You can’t be too careful.” He pulled a hip flask out of his jacket and leaned past Dean’s incredulous look to hold it out to Sam. “I still think it’s really weird to use salt like this.”

Sam took the flask gratefully, a bubble of relief rising in his chest. Alex either wasn’t pissed at him, or he had been and now he was over it. Sam wouldn’t normally accept the alcohol, it was only four in the afternoon or something, but he deeply, deeply appreciated the tacit forgiveness Alex seemed to be offering. Plus, it was such a Dean thing to do, to carry a flask, and it made him wonder which of them had gotten the habit off the other.

“I’ve seen vampires killed with everything from chopsticks to fence posts,” Alex went on, even though no-one else had contributed to the conversation. “So I get how everyday stuff can used for the wonderful work we all do. But I still think salt is something you have on fries.”

Dean still had his glare mostly focused on Sam, but he sent another incredulous look Alex’s way at the casual tone in his voice.

Sam took healthy swig from the flask while Alex was talking, but when the liquid in the flask was water instead of the alcohol he was expecting, he spluttered and almost choked.

“Holy water, on the other hand, I’ve used before,” Alex added calmly. “Works well on vampires.”

Sam stared at him for a second, swallowing carefully. “Sure, yeah, I’ve heard that.” Suddenly, the flask wasn’t a peace offering at all, and he felt very out of his depth.

Dean, he noticed, was staring at Alex, but this time he had hearts in his eyes again.

“Unlike holy water, salt has no effect on vampires at all,” Alex said, still calm, still polite, but now Sam thought he could hear an edge in his voice, a slight barb, and he had no idea how to react to it. “Although, to be honest, I’ve never actually _tried_ it.” His voice was so _thoughtful_. But the calm was only on the surface, and Sam no longer believed Alex was trying to ease the tension and awkwardness at all. He shifted, frowning, and tried to work out what to say, and handed the flask back carefully.

Alex took it and went on, still thoughtful, still acting like they were having a random conversation without any of the undercurrents that were making Sam so nervous. “Actually, you know what? Spike used to eat salt all the time, on fries and bar nuts and stuff. There’s no way he could be repelled by it. Pity.” As what seemed like an afterthought, he added, “The coffin thing’s a myth, too, by the way.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam said, for lack of anything better to say. Dean was grinning at Alex, and Sam had a feeling it was at his expense. Nothing less than he deserved, he decided, resigned.

Then Alex glanced over at him, and he must have seen how uncomfortable Sam was because he suddenly relented. “Did you guys get food?” he asked.

“Yeah, just some burgers.”

“Come on, then, I’m starving.” He clasped Dean’s arm briefly as he walked past, a gesture Sam wasn’t sure if he was supposed to have seen. Dean’s eyes tracked Alex as he walked by, longing buried deep in his gaze.

Then he switched that gaze to Sam, and his expression shifted to totally _furious_.

Dean didn’t speak, probably didn’t want to draw attention, but he stepped up to Sam and pointed a single finger, backing it up with the angriest glare Sam had ever seen. The unspoken warning was clear. Sam raised both hands and let his awareness of his fuck-up show on his face. He hoped Dean could see the silent apology, too.

After another moment of angry scrutiny, Dean apparently decided his point was made and pulled away, following Alex around to the engine, around to John. Sam knew he hadn’t been forgiven, though. He could only hope the damage wasn’t permanent.

While they’d been talking, Lou had been thanked and ushered off. His truck was barely fifty feet down the road before John had opened up the engine again, to get to work. Dean looked set to join him, but Sam stopped him and insisted they eat first. Dean looked set to argue, but Alex gave him a single glance and he caved. They ate fast, and silently.

Sam was told that he was absolutely not allowed to help with the engine. Well, John told him; Dean turned his back. Sam watched them for a while, then went around the back of the van and dug out a pack of cards.

He and Alex had several polite rounds of Crazy Eights, sitting on the edge of the road, their boots in the dirt, and gradually Sam felt some of the tension ease. Dean kept one eye on them the whole time, aware of every single interaction between them. Sam kept his thoughts to himself, minded his manners, and he knew it mattered to Dean. Sam knew he would only forgive Sam if he proved he wouldn’t push again.

Alex was either oblivious to the subtext, or he was ignoring it. From the tired, fed-up look on his face, Sam would have bet on the latter.

Finally, John suggested they test the engine. It roared into life – as much as a minivan engine could roar, anyway – and sounded like it was turning cleanly. Sam was relieved they’d be on the road again before it was dark. He’d been keeping one eye on the setting sun, and the gathering dusk had an additional kind of tension crawling across his shoulders.

He was just helping John put the tools in the back, glad for some way to contribute, when his phone buzzed in his pocket. It kept buzzing – a call, not a message.

He pulled it out and was surprised to see Bobby’s number on the screen.

Then he wondered why he was surprised. They’d left Bobby’s place three days ago, and hadn’t called him since. No wonder Bobby was trying to track them down.

The last time they’d seen him flashed up in Sam’s mind; it was just after he’d been to the hospital and discovered Dean was missing. Rather than steal a car, John had gotten them both to Bobby’s with the aim of borrowing something legitimate.

 _“I need a vehicle,” John had said, barely stopping to say hello._

 _“What? What kind of vehicle?”Bobby had replied, following John as he stormed out through the car yard. Sam had trailed after them, too freaked out and anxious to really contribute._

 _“A car, Bobby, Jesus,” John had said impatiently. “Me and Sam need to get to Cleveland.”_

 _“What? Who the hell is gonna look out for Dean while you’re chasing after whatever-the-hell in Cleveland?” Bobby had said, angrier than Sam would have expected._

 _But John had just gritted his teeth and kept moving, looking for a car that looked like it might run. Sam didn’t speak, just followed him and waited. Bobby had followed too, still visibly fuming. “Dean’s not in the hospital,” John had eventually admitted. “That’s why we need to go to Cleveland.”_

 _There had been a brief silence and some stunned blinking from Bobby. “What the hell do you mean, he’s not in the hospital? He just came out of a coma.” Bobby had been bewildered, anger disappearing in his confusion._

 _His words made Sam wince, but John had whirled around to face Bobby, the glare on his face making him stop short and even take a step back. “Dean left the hospital last night. He’s going to Cleveland. Me and Sam need a car so we can track him down and kill him. Is that enough information for you?” he spat, his frustration apparently reaching murderous levels._

 _Bobby had stared at John for another second, unintimidated, but without much further comment, he’d shown them the dilapidated minivan. “It’s all I’ve got running at the moment.”_

 _John had pressed his lips tight together, then grunted. “It’ll have to do,” he’d said grimly._

 _Bobby had watched him for a minute, then asked softly, “What’s in Cleveland that Dean was so desperate to get to?”_

 _John didn’t reply; all Bobby got was cold silence._

So, John hadn’t ever answered Bobby’s question, and at the time Sam had followed his lead, but now, with his phone ringing and Bobby on the other end, he wished they had Bobby in the loop already. Sam had no idea how to explain any of this to him.

He answered anyway. Hopefully Bobby wouldn’t ask. “This is Sam.”

“Hey kid,” came the familiar voice. It sparked a rush of something oddly like homesickness.

“Hey, Bobby,” he said warmly, feeling relieved. “You know, I’ve got a bone to pick with you about this van you gave us. The engine crapped out and we’ve been stranded in Texas. What the hell, man?”

There was a short pause, then Bobby’s disbelieving voice. “The hell are _you_ doing, driving that heap of crap to Texas? I thought you were only going to Cleveland.”

“Change of plans. We’re heading to LA, actually,” Sam admitted.

“LA? What the—you know what? I don’t want to know. If your dad can keep that thing running all the way to LA, he’s a miracle worker.”

Sam smiled. “Good to know. Hey, we found Dean.” A hiss of what might have been relief from Bobby, and Sam added awkwardly, “I should have called you.”

“Yeah, you should have,” Bobby replied, sounding a little pissed. “I mean, it’s not like I was worried about the little prick or anything.”

“I know, Bobby. I’m sorry,” Sam said.

“I’m going to assume he’s okay, since none of you called asking for my help getting him out of whatever trouble he got himself into?” Bobby went on, and Sam could see his point, really.

“Yeah, he’s fine. We should have told you,” he said, still apologetic. He cleared his throat, then attempted to change the subject. “So, did you just call to talk about how shitty your van is?”

Bobby hesitated, then sighed. “The fact that the van broke down and stranded you all is probably a good thing, really, cause it means Dean can’t drive straight here to give me hell.” His tone was slightly distracted, and Sam tensed up.

“Bobby, is something wrong?”

Bobby sighed again. “Yeah, kid. I’d better tell it straight to Dean, since he’s there.”

Tense became flat-out worried, but rather than demanding answers from Bobby, Sam headed over to where Dean was taking one last look over the engine and handed the phone over. Alex, who’d been standing nearby but keeping his distance from the engine, frowned and raised an eyebrow as if to say ‘what’s up?’ Sam shrugged.

Dean greeted Bobby pretty cheerfully, but as they watched, his expression turned to complete shock. “ _Gone_? What the hell do you mean, _gone_?” He listened again. “ _Stolen_?” he shouted raggedly, shock and disbelief already becoming anger.

Sam’s stomach dropped. There was only one thing Bobby had that he’d specifically talk to Dean about, only one thing that could be important enough to steal. But why? And how? It couldn’t be, he had to be wrong.

“What’s going on?” John muttered from behind him. Sam hadn’t even noticed him come up, but there he was, wiping his hands on a rag.

“It’s Bobby on the phone,” Sam said nervously. “I think someone stole the Impala.” John’s eyebrows almost hit his hairline, and Alex glanced at him as well, startled.

“Someone took the car?” Alex said, surprised.

“It’s the only thing of ours Bobby has, the only thing he’d need to tell Dean about.” The only thing Dean would freak out about like this, Sam didn’t say.

Sam turned his full attention back to Dean, who was still listening to Bobby, expression getting more and more thunderously angry by the second. “What leads have you got?” he demanded. “What clues did these motherfuckers leave behind, Bobby? They took my car, I’m going to track them down and _kill their asses_.”

Sam winced. He recognised that tone; that tone meant that Dean was not joking at all.

“No. No, I don’t give a damn,” Dean said, pacing away from the minivan. Every muscle in his body seemed tense, and he was practically growling out the words. “I don’t care, I’ll do it. I will come up there and find them myself if I have to, Bobby—“ He turned back to face them, and then he froze. The words of his argument seemed to die in his throat.

His eyes had fallen on Alex. “Fuck,” Dean said, shocked and still staring at Alex. Bobby might have been saying something on the other end, but Dean was no longer listening. He looked totally stricken.

“What?” Alex asked, after a moment of Dean’s horrified staring. And suddenly, Sam worked it out.

Dean was going to have to decide between hunting the demon – protecting Alex – and going after whoever took the car. Shit.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think,” Dean said, lowering the phone to speak to Alex. “I didn’t mean it, I swear.”

“Didn’t mean what? What are you talking about? What’s happened to the car?” Alex’s brow was furrowed – he honestly didn’t get it.

But Dean had already turned away. He was running a shaking hand through his hair; he still wasn’t listening to Bobby. Alex or the car. Sam was pretty sure he knew which one Dean was going to pick, but tearing himself away from the car – from hunting down the idiots that took it and dealing with them – wasn’t going to be easy for him.

Dean eventually spoke into the phone again. “Bobby? You still there?” His voice was bleak, rough with what Sam could almost call hurt. After a long hesitation, during which Bobby didn’t seem to be saying anything, Dean said, “We have to keep going to LA. We have to—it’s about a weapon, we’re getting a weapon to use on the demon, we can’t come and look for the car.”

Alex inhaled sharply.

Dean listened, then kept listening. Then he shook his head, and even though he looked totally devastated, his next words were, “Come on, Bobby, this isn’t your fault.” He listened some more, and then his shoulders slumped. He rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand and his brow furrowed, the scar standing out as a deep cross-hatch.

“Jesus. No, I’m sure you did.” He paused to listen again. “No, it’s not your fault, seriously. Who the fuck would have expected this to happen?”

He listened some more, and then his head snapped up. He froze, and whatever Bobby said had all the tension returning to his body.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, in a low, dangerous voice Sam had only heard once or twice before, when Dean was genuinely, ferociously angry.

He kept listening, then said, “Well, that’s very interesting.” His voice was scary-soft, and Sam felt he hairs on the back of his neck prickle. Dean glanced at Alex, but then met their father’s eyes with a significant look.

“Okay, Bobby, let me know when you have something,” he said, and snapped the phone shut. “The demon. The fucking demon might have taken my car.”

Sam's stomach dropped again. All of them stilled; a tense silence descended fast.

Dean had directed his statement at John, but Sam was the first to recover enough to speak. “What the hell? How does Bobby know it was the demon?”

“He doesn’t, not exactly. But he swears he saw the car first thing this morning. It was in the part of the yard right near the house, and he was in that house all day. He wasn’t being loud, he wasn’t asleep. By the end of the day it was gone, and he doesn’t know exactly when it was taken, but whenever it was, he didn’t hear a damn thing.”

Anger and conviction was shining in Dean’s eyes, visible in the clench of his jaw. He said to Sam, “You said that car was totalled, right? There was no wheeling it off quietly, they’d need a truck to get it out, right? A truck, people to move it, there’s no way they could muffle the noise enough to get it past Bobby.” He looked between the three of them, wanting agreement.

“And so the only way to do it would be magic,” Alex finished thoughtfully.

“Exactly. Goddamn stinking demon magic, to steal my car, _my car_ ,” Dean said furiously. “Bobby’s checking, somehow, he’s got some ritual he can do that means he might be able to see traces of the spell, or whatever. He’s going to let me know.”

“Why?” Alex said abruptly, interrupting before Dean could continue.

“What?” Dean said, apparently derailed.

“Why would they steal it?” Alex clarified, looking at Dean and somehow just _asking_ , not challenging or disagreeing. “The Impala’s an amazing car, don’t get me wrong, but it was totalled. There wasn’t anything valuable in it. Nothing about it could tell the demon where you are now, and even if there was, there’s probably easier ways to find you. Plus, any spell you’d have to use to transport something like that would take effort, even for something powerful. I’m just wondering...what’s the angle?”

Alex paused to let that sink in, and Sam could recognise a voice of reason when he heard one. He was a little embarrassed he hadn’t thought to ask this question himself. He noticed John also casting a sharp glance at Alex, and Sam tried not to be totally shocked when he recognised the look in his father’s eyes as respect.

Dean huffed impatiently, but frowned like he was thinking. There was another short silence while they _all_ thought, until Dean finally said, “You know what? I don’t care. Maybe it’s got an angle, maybe it’s just trying to fuck with us. I just want to get back on the road and get that weapon so I can kill the son of a bitch.”

With that, he turned and marched towards the back of the car. Alex watched him go with a frown, but after a second he followed.

Before John could go with them, Sam tugged on his arm, tugged him back a little so they’d be out of earshot. “That could be the angle,” he said in a low voice.

“What could?” John frowned.

“Dean. Threatening Alex, and now stealing the Impala? Dean’s furious, and what if that’s exactly what it wants? Angry, irrational, reckless, not stopping until he kills it or _it kills him_ ,” Sam said significantly.

Realisation cleared John’s forehead, and he looked over at Dean’s determined stride, the way his jaw was clenched with anger. He nodded grimly. “I’ll talk to him when he calms down a bit. And you and me, we’ll both keep an eye on him.”

Sam tried to be satisfied with that. “Yeah, okay,” he agreed. Wait-and-see plans always sucked.

But John was probably right. There was no talking Dean out of this mood, and all they were about to do was drive. There would be time enough to talk to him after the initial shock and anger had worn away a little.

They got the car packed in record time – not that there was much to get done – and when they were ready, Dean stomped around to the driver’s side. “I need to drive.”

Sam sighed. “Dean...”

“Shut up, Sam. I _need_ to drive,” Dean glared, and while Sam couldn’t believe how much of an asshole Dean was still being about his recent coma – _coma_ , for Christ’s sake – the glare was fairly convincing. He relented, figuring maybe it’d be okay.

John had ignored their arguing and headed around to the passenger side. He’d got the door open and everything, when he suddenly checked himself. Sam could barely believe it, but he actually looked back at Alex, raising an eyebrow as if asking whether this was okay.

Alex raised his own eyebrow, but simply nodded and reached for the back seat doorhandle.

“Sam,” Dean growled from the driver’s side window. “Get in the damn car.”

Sam sighed and got in the back seat. He prayed Dean’s head would hold out, that he’d be okay. He started praying for the rest of them, too, a little, when Dean floored the gas and peeled out, spitting gravel as they went.

 

***

 

Dean drove and didn’t think. He didn’t think about his car, didn’t think about the demon, he just thought about driving. He thought about how fast they could go, how fast he could push the damn piece of shit minivan, and how the knife was waiting for them, hanging in the distance like a beacon.

He didn’t think about his car. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to think about Bobby, either, about the way Bobby’s voice was still ringing in his ears – _gone, son, stolen, didn’t hear a damn thing, I’m sorry_ – and he didn’t want to think about the way the world had whirled around him when he’d heard it.

He didn’t want to think about his car. Didn’t want to think about the way it was _his car_ , his baby, his home and the only thing in his life that’d ever been constant.

God. No, dammit, he wasn’t going to think about it. He was going to concentrate on _this_ car, on the minivan and the road, on not flipping the fuck out.

He accelerated some more. A road sign flew by, and he realised they were halfway to the next town already. He also realised he didn’t actually remember leaving the intersection, let alone passing through that shithole they’d been stranded next to and re-joining the highway.

But that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter where they were exactly, all that mattered was that there was road stretched out in front of him and his foot was on the gas. If he accelerated long enough, he’d have a weapon. Get the weapon, kill the demon. Keep Alex safe. Either get his car back, or avenge its destruction.

Destruction. Fuck. The Impala was gone.

Dean accelerated again, trying to outrun his thoughts, and the van started to shudder. He had to ease back off, and gritted his teeth, briefly imagining torching the minivan when they were finally done with it. He wasn’t going to lie, it was a satisfying fantasy. The highway just wasn’t passing fast enough.

This must be how John felt, all the time. And Sam. The hatred and blame, the feeling of urgency, the need for retribution. And it wasn’t that Dean hadn’t been on board with it all before, but only a few days earlier, he’d said – out loud – that he didn’t care who killed the demon.

Now, he wanted to do it himself. He was going to chase the fucking thing down, and kill it. He didn’t want to do it cleanly, either. If there was any way he could manage it, the demon’s death would be long, drawn-out and messy.

He owed it, after all. The car was just the straw that broke the damn camel, or whatever the hell that saying was; he owed it for Jess and Sam, for John, for his mom. And most of all, for Alex. Alex, who Dean had just realised was real, tired and damaged and still the best thing he’d ever seen, even with all the secrets. If anything happened to him...

Shit, he didn’t need to go there right now. He could already feel pain and a weird kind of _hurt_ seeping through, loss like a rock lodged in his throat, but if he didn’t try to add to it by thinking about Alex, maybe he wouldn’t embarrass himself. He had to focus on anger, on getting the weapon and finding new ways to torture that yellow-eyed bitch until it died.

He gritted his teeth some more and tried accelerating a little again, but the van shuddered worse this time. Much worse.

“Dean,” his father suddenly snapped. Dean jerked, surprised. He’d forgotten he wasn’t alone, too caught up in the haze of incoherent anger.

He glanced at John, took in how he was gripping the damn door handle like he thought Dean was about to crash the car. Dean couldn’t see into the back, but everything felt...tense. On edge. And it was because of him, he realised. His mood was freaking everyone out.

Well, fuck. He couldn’t do anything about it – even realising _that_ made more anger and frustration bubble inside him, like he couldn’t do a damn thing right – but he cleared his throat and settled a little deeper into the driver’s seat, trying to reign himself in. If he couldn’t turn it off, he could fake it.

After a moment’s hesitation, he eased off on the gas, just a little.

The atmosphere in the car relaxed a fraction. Dean angrily resigned himself to pretending he was less furious than he felt. He checked the rear view, looking for Alex, and caught his eye immediately, but just a glance at the sympathy on his face threatened to crack what little control Dean had just managed to muster, and he looked away quickly.

He wasn’t going to think about it anymore. He wasn’t. He wasn’t going to think about everything he’d lost, and everything he had yet to lose. He settled in further, for a few more hours of gritting his teeth, gripping the steering wheel and staring fixedly at the horizon.


	5. Kotov Syndrome

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from a song by Rise Against. Okay, this is the part where it’s going to become really, really obvious that I know SFA about PTSD. So, sorry if it seems really unrealistic...

Hours passed, and Dean was still wound up tight enough to blow. His jaw ached from clenching his teeth, and his back was locked in tense knots. Usually, driving relaxed him. It calmed him down, gave him time to think, usually helped him let go of whatever anger he was carrying. But hours had passed, and he hadn’t relaxed much at all. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised him. With everything that’d happened in the past few days – the past few months, too, and hell, the past _year_ – and now the car...

If he was honest, the strain of the past few hours had exhausted him. But the anger in his gut wouldn’t let him stop. The only thing keeping it from reaching critical mass was the knowledge that they were eating miles between them and the weapon. That they were getting closer and closer to the handover.

Dean glanced in the rear view. Alex was hunched down, looking out the window. Abruptly, Dean wanted to touch him, wanted the reassurance that Alex was there, not pinned to a wall, not dead and gone, not leaving Dean yet. He shifted uneasily, anxiety mixing with his anger, and took a few more glances, trying to tell himself it was enough.

It wasn’t. A big disadvantage of driving had suddenly made itself clear; he couldn’t stare at Alex enough, not without taking his eyes off the road. And fuck, he was such a stalker.

The van passed a sign for a gas station up ahead, and Dean decided to turn off. They needed to fill up, and maybe he could get some coffee. It’d be okay – he’d wake up some, calm down a bit more, and keep going. He’d probably have to stare at Alex for a while, too, to make up for the hours he’d missed, he thought, but he could do that.

For the first time, he felt bitter about his situation. One thing the past few hours of fury had been good for was distracting him from the constant feeling of _waiting_. Waiting for Alex to decide what he wanted, to decide whether he would let Dean be in his life or not, whether he ever wanted Dean to touch him again. Waiting to be trusted with the secrets that seemed piled on Alex’s shoulders like the weight of the world.

But he shoved those thoughts away from him. They were a product of his filthy mood; none of this was Alex’s fault.

Dean pulled the van off the highway, heading for the station. No-one said a word, so he assumed they either didn’t care that he was filling up on a tank that was still almost half full, or they wanted him to stop driving. Whatever, though.

He slammed his way out of the van, and went around to work the pump. After a moment or two, another door slammed, he tensed in anticipation. He was still this close to losing it, so hopefully whoever it was wouldn’t try to talk to him. Even Alex, he didn’t think he even wanted to talk to him right now.

John came around the side of the van, and Dean’s hackles rose. He refused to look up at him, and kept all his attention focused on filling the tank.

“Hey.” John’s voice sounded neutral enough, but Dean wasn’t fooled.

“Hey,” he replied suspiciously.

“You alright?”

Dean just grunted, because seriously, what the fuck did John expect him to say to that? And godamnit, why the hell did it take so long to fill half a tank?

“Dean,” John began, then stopped. He sighed. Dean tried to ignore it, but tension crawled down his spine. There were a couple of things John probably wanted to talk about, and most of them wouldn’t make for an enjoyable conversation.

“Look,” his father tried again. “Dean, you need to take it easy. I know the thing with the car is a blow—“

“A blow?” Dean interrupted, staring at him. “You call this a _blow_? Dad, it’s _the car_.” He didn’t even have words for how much ‘a blow’ was an _understatement_.

“I know it’s the car. But Dean, you _cannot_ let that thing get to you,” John insisted.

Dean frowned. What the hell was John talking about? How the fuck was he supposed to _not_ let it get to him?

“Sam thinks that the demon might be trying to make you angry so you’ll do something reckless, and I agree,” John said, and Dean recognised the old tone of command, the tone of voice that used to have him obeying without question. “I think it’s targeting you specifically, here, and you need to be careful.” He emphasised the last few words heavily.

Dean wanted to roll his eyes. “Reckless? You’re one to talk,” he muttered. Of all the problems currently facing them, his ‘recklessness’ should be the least of John’s worries. The fuel pump finally clicked, and Dean replaced it with frustrated, jerky movements.

“I know I have to be careful too,” John was saying, irritated but still apparently staying on topic. “I just don’t want you to do anything stupid, especially not before we get that weapon.”

“I don’t know why you’re telling me this. I haven’t done anything,” Dean said. He turned and stalked towards the store to pay, and over his shoulder he snapped, “I’ve just been driving.”

He couldn’t believe that John of all people was lecturing him on keeping his cool. What a joke.

But by the time Dean was done and counting his change, guilt had set in, and he hated it. The car had been stolen. And it was his car, but it’d been John’s first, and when John passed it on Dean had promised to take care of it. Now it was gone, and Dean felt like he’d failed.

Which was ridiculous because this _wasn’t his fault_. And not only that, but no matter what comas people had been in, if John blamed Dean for this he’d probably have no problem telling him. Which meant the guilt was kicking in out of long-held loyalty to the bastard, and with everything that’d gone down recently, Dean just wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

He frowned, picking through the coins he’d gotten from the cashier as he crossed the concrete. God, he was fucked in the head.

He looked up, and suddenly every thought flew out of his mind.

Alex. And it was ridiculous, because he wasn’t even doing anything. He’d gotten out of the van to stretch his legs or something, and walked between the pumps like he was coming to meet Dean. But as soon as Dean saw him, he got thrown headlong into one of those mind-freezing moments again, where all he could do was stare and be desperately glad Alex was alive.

It was weird, and totally blindsided him. Again. Time slowed, his heart beat faster, he wanted to smile and never stop. His brain lost track of everything else and just filled up with Alex. It hurt, too, but in a way that felt so fucking awesome.

He shook his head, coughed a bit, tried to clear away the feeling. Because what the fuck even was that? He was depressed and guilty one minute, he was still angry about his car, he’d even been vaguely pissed at Alex himself not twenty minutes earlier. But he still got thrown into some kind of dizzying, Alex-related high? God, it was like he was on a rollercoaster or something, like he couldn’t keep his brain on an even keel. Embarrassingly, it was also like something out of a romance novel, or some stupid chick flick movie Sam would probably like.

Fuck, he thought helplessly. By the end of this, he’d be locked away in a mental hospital, for sure.

Alex was coming to meet him, though, so Dean shook off the crazy, forced the emotions back into their box, and tried to paste on what he hoped was a neutral face.

“Hey,” Alex said, and Dean tried not to let the note of real concern in his voice make him too giddy.

“Hey yourself,” he managed. God, he was such an awesome conversationalist. But in his own defence he’d just been totally overwhelmed by his own stupid brain, and he couldn’t quite think straight yet.

“You okay? What did John say?” Alex’d turned to start walking back to the car, falling in beside Dean, so Dean shook off his shock and started walking again too.

“Just to be careful,” he admitted. “Him and Sam think the demon could be trying to get me riled up, so I do something stupid.” He had to grit his teeth as he thought of his car again; his Alex-related high hadn’t even dented his deep-seated anger at the thought of the demon’s dirty claws all over his baby.

“Huh,” Alex said, then nodded. “Okay, well, I kind of agree with them, I guess.”

Dean stared for a second, surprised. “Really? You think so?” He frowned. Could the demon be trying to get to him? If Alex thought so...

“Well, it makes sense, kind of,” Alex replied.

Dean hesitated, unsure how to reply, then said, “Agreeing with Sam and Dad? Bet you didn’t see that coming.”

“Not exactly,” Alex agreed. He seemed to hesitate as well, but then he didn’t say anything else. Dean glanced over, but Alex’s expression was guarded, neutral.

They got back to the van, and when Dean headed around the side to the front, he stopped.

John was sitting half-in, half-out of the driver’s seat, and when he saw Dean coming he raised an eyebrow at him, daring him to say something.

Fuck, Dean thought. He glowered for a moment. He was perfectly capable of driving, and he wasn’t going to do anything stupid. But then he just rolled his eyes, because fuck it, apparently he wasn’t the only one who could do over-protective. Without a word, he climbed into the back next to Alex and slammed the door.

 

***

 

When Dean got in the back seat, radiating irritation and resentment, Xander immediately directed most of his attention towards him. He didn’t stare directly – unlike some people, he could do subtle – but he kept a lot of focus on what he hear, what he could see in his peripheral vision.

He told himself it was a precaution. It was going on five hours since Bobby’s call, and loss and hurt had to start breaking through Dean’s angry facade at some point. And Xander wanted to...what?

Know about it? _Do_ something? What the fuck could he possibly do?

The Impala had been stolen.

If Xander knew nothing else about Dean, he knew he loved that car. It was his most cherished possession, the single thing on this planet that he loved without reservation or condition. It was his home, too. Hell, it was practically a family member. Totalled was one thing – if there had been a side mirror and half a gas tank left, Dean could and would have rebuilt it – but _gone_?

Xander was having a hard time even believing it. The Impala was _gone_. That car was such a big part of Dean, it was surprisingly hard not to feel like something about Dean was gone, too.

And so, despite the brave face he was putting on, Xander was a little worried that this could send Dean totally over the edge. Sam and John were right to be concerned, and Dean was right – Xander never would have thought he’d see the day when they all agreed on something so easily.

Discreetly, he glanced over. Dean seemed to be lost in thought, staring out the window. But his jaw was tense, he was gritting his teeth again or something, like he had been for the entire ride out of Texas.

He had to be desperate to go to Bobby’s, desperate to go and investigate the whole thing properly, chase down whoever had stolen his baby and break their kneecaps. It had to be eating away at him, and Xander honestly thought it would probably come about equal with tracking the demon, for Dean. The only way to reconcile the two would be if the demon _was_ the one who’d stolen the car, and despite how much sense it made, for some reason Xander wasn’t convinced.

Anyway, though, there was absolutely nothing he could do to help. All he could do was sit there and let Dean suffer through it.

Except...

Xander looked away for a second, then look back, uncertain. Dean was angled slightly away, curled towards the window with one arm up on the door. The other hand was in his lap, making a fist.

He could hold that hand, if he wanted.

Dean had held his, for hours, practically the whole way from Cleveland to California. Honestly, it was the least he could do. But Xander hesitated. He could practically feel Dean’s hand in his already, feel warm skin and flexing fingers, but the thought made him stop. This was probably the part where the road-trip idea backfired.

The two of them were supposed to be in a holding pattern until Xander worked out what he wanted. Comforting Dean, _worrying_ about Dean, was not part of that pattern. Getting overly invested in Dean’s emotional well-being was not going to do him – either of them – and favours in the long run.

Because despite how much Xander loved him – and he knew he did, that had never really been in question – he still might have to say no. It wasn’t what he wanted, not at all, but what if he had to? What if he couldn’t give Dean what he wanted? What if it all fell apart?

If he reached out and held Dean’s hand, it might just make it so much harder for both of them. For Xander to break Dean’s heart, and for Dean to let him go afterward, if that’s what it came to.

Dean’s hand in his, and that fucking polaroid, none of it was helping. And fuck Sam, seriously. The image had reminded Xander so vividly of everything he’d wanted. It’d made him forget the boundaries he’d drawn around himself when it came to Dean.

He felt like he was in too deep, too fast, and what if he couldn’t get back out?

So he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t offer Dean comfort, he shouldn’t hold his hand. But then he looked over at Dean again, and all his thoughts stuttered to a halt.

Dean looked miserable. Well, to the unschooled observer, he’d probably just look slumped in his seat, but Xander knew. The anger had finally faded, and Dean hadn’t been able to keep out the grief.

Shit.

Just like before, when they’d been by the side of the road, the sight of Dean’s genuine unhappiness trapped him. And he wanted to resent it, but it wasn’t anything Dean was doing on purpose. It was just...fuck, he really was in too deep. Maybe it was time to give in?

And that thought right there was _exactly_ why he never should have gone on this road trip. Hell, he shouldn’t have even let Dean back into his apartment. Stupidest move he’d ever made. He knew, he _knew_ it was a bad idea, even before he opened the door. He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his distance. He knew he was way too addicted to Dean to ever be able to be logical about all of this.

In the spirit of that addiction and before he could think any further about what he was doing, he reached out for Dean’s hand.

As soon as their skin touched, Dean started, surprised, and opened his mouth like he wanted to say something. He stared at Xander, but let Xander take his hand and didn’t pull away.

Xander flexed his fingers around Dean’s until their grip was comfortable and watched Dean’s expression helplessly, sure his sympathy was showing on his face. Dean met his eyes, flinched, and looked away.

Which was fine. Xander didn’t want to Dean to break down, didn’t want to break through whatever walls Dean was constructing to be able to deal with this. He didn’t want to make Dean vulnerable in front of John and Sam. Dean might never forgive him for it.

Xander let their hands fall on the seat between them and looked away as well, staring blindly out the window again. He felt like he’d just made a mistake, like he might regret this new development. His list felt like an absolute lie again. Item number one, Dean, and it had only ever been his way of pretending he could control his feelings. He didn’t want this, didn’t want to feel like he needed Dean to be okay, like he needed Dean. He couldn’t handle it, he wasn’t ready. Everything was too unstable.

Dean’s hand in his felt exactly like he’d imagined it.

Then, just as his confusion reached a peak, the minivan cleared a curve, and the landscape opened up in front of them, lit faintly by the light of the moon. Xander's stomach dropped. He’d known they were in New Mexico, but suddenly he could see it, see the familiar desert landscapes, and the significance of where he was suddenly hit him.

Unless the minivan broke down again, they would be in California by tomorrow morning. New Mexico, Arizona, then California, and Xander wasn’t sure but he thought they were most of the way through New Mexico already.

California felt like a sword dangling over his head, waiting to fall. Arizona was the only thing standing in the way, and the state had never seemed smaller.

He couldn’t stop the surge of anxiety, and Dean’s hand in his suddenly felt like more of a comforting anchor than a bad idea. Jesus, they were almost in California. Five more hours, maybe a little bit more. As much as he knew he should pull away, pull back inside himself and get some distance, he suddenly couldn’t bear to let go.

It was unforgivably selfish, and Xander knew it. He was taking comfort from Dean that he had no right to, especially since he’d been so hesitant to comfort Dean in the first place. But he needed it – he hoped he wasn’t lying to himself to think that they both did, probably. He also hoped he wouldn’t regret it.

So he kept his hand wrapped around Dean’s, and flexed his fingers every few moments to remind himself that Dean was there. He could feel every inch of their skin where it was pressed together – he could practically feel every whorl of Dean’s fingerprints, where they touched the back of his hand.

He tried not to think about the First, or the demon, or California. He tried to stare out at the horizon and pretend like nothing was wrong, pretend he still had a plan and he knew what he was doing.

Pretend he wasn’t totally, _totally_ fucked.

 

***

 

Hours later, they stopped to fill up again. They were somewhere in Arizona by now, although Xander had lost track of exactly where. Too many towns, too much highway.

As soon as the van pulled up to the pump, Xander got out. The sun wouldn’t be up for a few more hours, so the parking lot was bathed in dark and silver. He scanned the place once, then walked carefully across the concrete, heading for the bathroom.

As he walked, the back of his neck prickled with anxiety. He waited for them to call after him, to insist he stay with the car, or that someone go with him. He prayed they wouldn’t, though; his iron grip on his thoughts, his emotions, his fucking _sanity_ , was faltering, and he needed some time to collect himself.

Somehow, on that last stretch of road, he’d managed to fall asleep. It hadn’t been part of the plan at all, because he knew what happened when he fell asleep when it was still dark, and he usually did everything he could to avoid it. Something about the car and the endless lack of anything else to do was making him stupid, though. And falling asleep was easily the stupidest thing he’d done all day.

Miraculously, he didn’t think anyone else had noticed the nightmare. When he woke from it, they hadn’t acted like they’d noticed, and not in the same way they’d pretended not to notice his nightmare the previous morning. Dean, who was the most likely to notice, had been crushed down in his corner of the car, a troubled look on his face even in sleep. Sam had been only slightly less asleep, and John had been driving a little bit like a robot, so Xander thought maybe this was actual, genuine not-noticing, and maybe he’d caught a lucky break.

He must have woken quietly, for once. He mustn’t have screamed like he usually did with a nightmare this bad.

They would have noticed him screaming, he was pretty sure about that.

Then, miracle of miracles, just as Xander was about to see if he could control his voice long enough to ask to stop somewhere, John had seen a gas station sign and pulled in. Another lucky break, because if Xander could have a minute – or ten – alone, safe from scrutiny, to get his breath back and try to quiet the horror eating away at his brain, he might just survive the rest of the drive. He honestly had to go, too, so the gas station bathroom felt like the best plan he’d ever had.

No-one called out for him. He ducked out of sight, so relieved he was almost shaking.

God, he was so lucky no-one had noticed. This nightmare had been worse than the previous one, much, much worse. And right now, the last thing he wanted was comment from a fucking Winchester – _any_ of them – about how fucked in the head he obviously was.

Xander thought carefully about nothing, distracting his brain long enough for him to actually use the bathroom. He was surprised he managed – his arm throbbed with pain, and he could barely use it. The strain and pressure in his head was like a migraine, but he refused to let it overtake him just yet.

He spared a brief second to worry about whether one of the others might also need to use the facilities, but as much as getting caught terrified him, the bathroom was better than nothing. And he had no choice; nowhere else to go.

He managed to keep himself under control right up until the moment that he was rinsing his hands.

Without warning, they started to shake. Hard. It got worse, and he gripped the sink just to stop the movement. The water was still running, and he just barely managed to get the tap turned off.

He stood there, head down, clenching his eyes shut. The shaking had moved into his arms, into his shoulders, into his whole body, and more and more of his weight rested on the sink. His breath came in deep, shuddering gasps and he tilted, losing his centre of gravity enough that he swayed forwards until his forehead rested on the spotted, blurry mirror.

It wasn’t panic. He knew what panic felt like, and this wasn’t it. It wasn’t exactly grief, either, although it felt kind of like it. He didn’t really know what it was, he just knew that if he had to keep it all in for one more second, he’d explode, or maybe just crumble away into nothing.

And he couldn’t ignore it or push it away, not this time. He had to let it happen, had to ride it out, even if it felt like it was about to break him.

The bathroom walls closed in around him. The pain in his arm got so bad he wanted to cry out, but he managed to muffle it, cradling that arm against his body. He made his other hand into a fist, used that arm to brace himself against the mirror, and finally let go.

Waves of leftover fear and sorrow washed over him, and he was torn between hoping he could somehow survive this, and wanting to be obliterated so all of it would _stop_. For the longest moments, he was deafened by the white noise in his ears and his own ragged breathing

It wasn’t fair, he decided helplessly. He didn’t usually let himself even go there, because ‘fairness’ was a concept he’d stopped believing in a long time ago, but for the first time in a long time, exactly how _un_ fair it all was just _crushed_ him.

He clenched his fist a little tighter, curling in on himself a little as the pain in his arm spread to his chest, his heart, flared and tightened. The screaming in his head reached a fever pitch, and he was lost, senses completely overwhelmed by the memory of nightmares and trauma.

Then, finally, after what felt like a long time, Xander started thinking coherently again. His brain came back online, he could process the messages his muscles were screaming at him. It’d be okay, he told himself, even though the lie made him feel sick. He told himself again, though, because there was no other choice. He had to be okay or they’d know.

They couldn’t know. He had to deal with it.

He gripped the side of the sink, testing his balance. Still too fucking shaky, so he took a moment to breathe and go through a few more calming repetitions of _it’ll be okay_. Because it would be. It had to be. He had to be okay before someone came looking for him.

He glanced up. The only thing reflected in the bathroom mirror was him. One look at his own face, though, and he had to look away.

Eventually the tightness in his chest started to ease. The shaking subsided, and so did the helpless, hitching breaths. He ached all over; he felt like he’d run a marathon, like he’d just worked all of his muscles past the point of endurance, but at least his body was coming back under his control again.

He closed his eyes, still cradling his still sullenly painful arm against his chest.

One last deep breath – and Christ, he hadn’t noticed it before but the smell in the bathroom was terrible – and he managed to start armouring himself again. The seconds ticked by, full of breathing and stiffening his spine until he could stand on his own two feet. It was hard, and he was still tired. But he had to let go of the damn sink some time.

He let go. He forced himself to meet his own eyes in the mirror until he couldn’t see the mix of loathing and sorrow, until it was all hidden away.

Xander sighed. Then he tiredly shouldered his way out the door.


	6. Shadow of California

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from a song by Blue Oyster Cult.

Still feeling raw, exposed and shaky, Xander trudged reluctantly back over to the minivan. He’d rather be anywhere else, and for a brief, irrational second, he blindly _hated_ Dean for being the reason he was there.

Reluctance aside, he reached the van. When he got there, Sam loomed out of the shadows and asked, voice rough, whether Xander thought he could drive for a while.

Shit.

He felt like he should refuse, like he was in no state to operate heavy machinery. But John looked remarkably like a zombie, and Sam didn’t look that much better. Dean was still asleep.

Maybe it would help to have something to do, something to keep him from falling asleep again? Not that he was about to, he acknowledged uneasily, but driving might help distract him from thinking about it.

Fucking nightmares.

So he agreed. John grumbled a bit about relinquishing control of the van when Sam instructed him to get away from the steering wheel, but then he got into the back seat pretty easily anyway. Sam went in to pay for the gas, and he came back out with a very large coffee that he promptly handed to Xander.

Xander took it, surprised. On sipping it, he discovered Sam’d put sugar in it – a _lot_ of sugar – and while sugar couldn’t fix the mess he was in, it helped. He felt himself mellow slightly, and considered revising his opinion of Sam, just a little bit.

Then he pulled himself together, pulled the minivan out from the pumps, and drove.

As far as distraction went, as far as a way to expend some of the strange restlessness that his nightmare and his episode in the bathroom seemed to have left him with, driving was successful for maybe half an hour.

Xander tried. He paid as much attention as he could to the road, to steering, to other cars, to the gas gauge, to his coffee. Except the road was two lanes of straight, the other traffic was almost non-existent, the coffee got cold and the tank was full.

He kept driving anyway. He didn’t have a choice. He just had to try not to think about all the stuff he didn’t want to think about, and he might be okay.

After a while, he thought about turning the radio on, to fill the silence. But it was four in the morning, and Dean and John were still asleep. He didn’t really want to wake them. And Sam, despite all his promises about staying awake and keeping Xander company, was also keeping pretty quiet. Xander suspected he was napping, which made him kind of an asshole again, but he’d been tired. Xander could deal.

It didn’t matter, he told himself. He’d be fine. He just had to keep driving.

Then the minivan flew past a Welcome to California sign, headlights illuminating the words, and Xander flinched. He’d known they were close, but fuck, they’d been closer than he thought.

He was back in California. He hadn’t been back since Sunnydale.

It wasn’t a big deal, he reminded himself, trying to feel less hunted. It was a state line, an arbitrary border. It meant nothing; his nightmares wouldn’t be any more potent here than they were in the rest of the world.

Right?

It didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to think about it. He wasn’t going to think about why he’d almost fallen apart in a gas station bathroom, about why the nightmare he’d had was so viciously unsettling. About the grief clenched around his heart and the fear across his shoulders.

It was all too confusing. Better to focus on the car and the road.

Except driving like this at night, with everyone else asleep, made him feel like there was nothing else in the world. Nothing but the van and the road signs and mile markers, the scrub, rocks and desert somewhere out beyond in the dark.

And him. Him and his issues.

But just because there had been something different about this latest nightmare, didn’t mean he had to expend any energy thinking about it, especially not in the car when someone might wake up and get a look at his face. He’d already fallen apart, there was no use thinking about it now that he’d managed to pull himself back together.

He kept driving. But it crept in anyway. And once he started thinking about it, he couldn’t stop. All he could do was grip the steering wheel and hope he didn’t drive them off the road.

The nightmare had begun like a lot of them did, with him on the roof, then in the school, the forest and the cemetery. And then he was in his dingy old apartment, talking to her.

She’d been asking him questions, he remembered that much. Questions like, was he really in love with Dean? Did he even remember _how_ to be in love with someone? She’d mocked him with the same questions he’d been asking himself just before he fell asleep, which in a way made it the most obvious dream in the history of the universe.

Then he’d cut himself open for her, like always, heart ripped out and bleeding on the shitty carpet, terror and remorse welling up inside him.

The usual stuff, really.

But, he remembered with a creeping sense of horror, that was when the pattern had broken and re-formed. The whole thing had cycled around to the beginning again, and started over.

The second cycle had barely begun when the story changed. She’d been on the roof, under the moon, with Dean.

She wasn’t supposed to be there.

It had never changed like that before. Until now, she’d been safely confined to his old apartment; every time he had nightmares he ended up there, no matter what else had gone on in the dream, but it was always the apartment, that was always the only place she’d been.

The thought that she could show up anywhere, any time he went to sleep...

And there was the panic he’d been waiting for. Was the nightmare going to change for good? Was she just going to turn up wherever she wanted, no matter what he’d been dreaming about? Xander’s grip tightened, his knuckles white with strain. He concentrated hard on the road, determined not to crash the damn car just because he was freaking out about his dreams.

But what the fuck was he going to do? He’d never thought about it before, but the pattern, the level of predictability in amongst the terror, had probably been the only thing that kept him from going off the rails months ago. Well, further off than he already _had_ , anyway. It was the only thing that kept the whole situation feeling even slightly manageable.

And now the pattern had been ruined. She’d stood there, on the roof, and asked him if he really thought he could ever escape from her. The kind, warm look on her face had been devastating, and before he’d been able to answer, he’d woken with his heart pounding and his forearm throbbing like he’d sliced it open again.

Not only that, but one round had always been enough to have him waking up and panicking, or with just enough emptiness in him to satisfy her. She’d never come back for more, had never made him go back to the start to do it all over again.

Why hadn’t she been satisfied this time? Why had she wanted him to bleed _again_? It didn’t make any sense.

 _Don’t think about it_ , he told himself, trying to will the fear away. She couldn’t, she couldn’t just be anywhere, and if she could, it didn’t matter. It didn’t make a difference where the nightmares happened, it’d always be the same result. She’d say things, he’d cut himself open, he’d wake up. That was how it always was, that was how it always would be.

It didn’t matter if his brain had apparently decided to fuck with him _even more than it already had_. There would still be patterns, there would still be things he could expect.

And at least he’d pulled himself together this time. In the past, he’d probably have viciously suppressed even the vaguest suggestion that he’d even had a bad dream, then gone out and tried to kill something dangerous, and spent at least a week without sleeping or eating. But maybe his bathroom meltdown had been _instead_ of all that?

It was kind of dark, like a silver lining, one that seemed black instead of silver, blackened further by the fact that the broken pattern made this one of the freakier nightmares he could remember. But the idea ticked over in his mind. Could the bathroom thing be instead of insomnia and passive suicide attempts? And if so, did it even count as progress if his brain was fucked up in a way that permitted him to function, instead of completely ruining his life?

Fuck, he hated his brain.

Xander shook his head and cleared his throat, trying to bring himself back to reality. Nausea rolled in his stomach, but he stared at the road, at the horizon. He ignored the tightness across his chest and shoulders and instead tried to convince himself that the sky behind him was getting lighter, that it wouldn’t be dark for too much longer.

He thought about the way the desert probably looked like it did in every road movie he’d ever seen, and promised himself that soon there would be enough daylight to see it.

As he searched for other distractions, the minivan passed a sign for a next truck stop about fifty miles down the highway. He could stop, that’d be distracting. It wouldn’t be for a while, but then he could get more coffee and have something to do with his hands that wasn’t just keeping them ten and two on the steering wheel. John might be pissed off if he woke to find the car stationary, but who really cared about that?

Or he could prod Sam awake and force him to talk. He could sleep later, he’d promised to stay awake. But then Xander considered the sort of subjects Sam might choose to discuss, and the awkward silences when Xander refused to discuss them, and decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

So he settled for trying to remember the ingredients of every cocktail on the menu at the Bronze. Somehow it worked, and kept his brain harmlessly occupied for almost half an hour, long enough for his heart rate to settle and everything else to recede. Tension still buzzed under his skin and there was still a touch of nausea in the pit of his stomach, but at least it was muted. Slowly but surely, he pulled himself further and further away from thoughts of nightmares and dead people and _Dean doesn’t love you, Alex_.

Then his phone buzzed, and he almost swerved off the road.

“Shit,” he muttered, fumbling it out of his pocket while still keeping his eyes on the road. Sam shifted beside him.

“Hello?” Xander said, flipping it open and answering without looking at the screen. Sam started awake at the sound of his voice, but Xander ignored him.

“Xander?” It was Giles.

Shit. His heart rate suddenly sped up again. It was _Giles_ , which meant it might be news. And there was no way he wanted to have this conversation with the collected Winchesters sitting right there, he didn’t care if any of them were awake or not.

“Just hang on a second, I’m driving. Let me pull off the road.” He dropped the phone into his lap, barely waiting for Giles’ agreement.

He took the next exit, speeding down a side road until he reached a truck stop, presumably the same one he’d seen the sign for earlier. He parked, didn’t bother to check whether he’d woken the back seat or not, and said to Sam, “I need to take this. I’m gonna get out and go over there.” He pointed to a random bit of bitumen a few yards away.

Sam hesitated, then said nervously, “Don’t go too far, okay?”

And that was inconsistent, because Sam hadn’t stopped him from heading off to the bathroom at the last stop, but Xander decided not to care. He was halfway out of the van already, so he just nodded absently. He had the phone in his hand, but as he walked away from the van, he took a moment, just to breathe. In, out. Deep breaths.

She wasn’t real. She wasn’t real, and when she was, she was lying. It didn’t matter, and he was tired but he’d pulled himself back together. It was enough for now, he could worry about the rest some other time.

When he felt a little more under control, he raised the phone and said, “You still there?”

“Of course. Is this a bad time?” Giles asked, sounding concerned.

Immediately, something inside Xander unclenched, relaxed just enough so that he almost felt like he could breathe without trying. It was getting to be a little Pavlovian, and Xander had no idea why Giles’ voice would be so reassuring since he usually only called with bad news, but he wasn’t about to question it.

In response to what Giles actually said, Xander shrugged. “It’s about five thirty am, and I was driving down the highway.”

Giles hmm’d then said, “I believe I’ve miscalculated the time difference. I thought it would be later in the morning. But since you were awake anyway, I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, it’s fine. Had a bit of an all nighter,” Xander said, and looked around a bit. The truck stop was deserted, still dark where there wasn’t a floodlight. He wasn’t intent on a bathroom this time, so he had the time to get paranoid, but it seemed safe enough. It didn’t give him that prickling feeling he sometimes got when something was wrong.

And overall, he felt calmer. All the really bad feelings seemed to have subsided, if just for a while, which was unexpected but again, not something he was going to complain about. He was still exhausted, but maybe he and Giles could have a rational conversation.

“I take it the road trip is progressing well, then?” Giles was asking, pulling Xander back out of his head.

“It’s going okay,” he replied, and despite everything, it almost didn’t feel like a lie. “We’ve been driving non-stop, except for when the van broke down for a couple of hours yesterday. We fixed it, though.” He paused, then added, “Well, Dean and John fixed it, I mostly just stood there.”

“I was going to asked when you’d found the time to become a mechanical expert, among all the other skills you’ve acquired over the years,” Giles said.

“Aw, Giles, you think I’ve got skills?” He kept his voice as light as possible, even though he wasn’t really feeling it. Even with his newfound calm, it felt like the dark night air was crowding in on him a little bit. But Giles didn’t need to know how fucked up he was.

“Mostly irritating ones,” Giles huffed, like he was embarrassed at being caught out. “What about the Winchesters?” he asked, changing the subject. “How have they...have they been polite?”

Xander thought back to Sam’s ham-handed matchmaking, to the way John’s mood seemed to swing from anxious protectiveness to eerie politeness to just kind of ignoring everyone. Then he thought about Dean’s hand again, warm around his own, and had to clear his throat.

“It’s been fine,” he managed. “Everyone has been very polite and courteous and all the other stuff that means you don’t have to fly out here and knock any heads together. Not yet, anyway,” he added. He eyed the bit of pavement at his feet. From what he could see in the dark, it didn’t look too filthy, he was wearing old jeans, and he knew Sam was watching him like a hawk. He felt like making himself a smaller target for a while.

“Any nightmares?” Giles asked quietly.

Xander sighed. He pulled out his cigarettes before he sat down – if he was getting into the gutter, he might as well go all the way – and lit one up before he answered. “Yes. But I can handle it,” he lied. “I’ve been thinking about them instead of ignoring them, so that might make a difference,” he added.

It made it hard to pretend he wasn’t fucked in the head when Giles knew enough to ask about it.

Then he thought about what he’d just said, and okay, he’d just pulled it out of his ass, but it might be true. Horrifying and depressing, but true. Thinking about them – acknowledging he was fucked up instead of pretending he was fine – _might_ help, he’d heard that sometimes worked for other people. And at least it matched what he’d said to Faith.

He took a drag of his cigarette and realised the feeling in his chest was relief. Improvised or not, that was a tiny piece of truth that he’d just acknowledged out loud, and to Giles, no less. It felt...weirdly liberating.

Giles didn’t need to know about the panic attack in the bathroom, though. The not-a-panic-attack. Whatever it was.

There was silence from Giles’ end for a moment, but then he said, “Well, that’s...not _good_ , exactly, but...”

“About as good as we can probably expect?” Xander suggested, surprising himself with how calm and even he sounded.

“Quite,” Giles replied. They were silent for another few moments, but it wasn’t totally awkward. Xander waited, smoking and trying not to inhale through his nose because the ground might not be completely filthy but the air smelled revolting, like exhaust, burnt rubber and hot cheese.

Giles cleared his throat. “I’ve spoken to Faith.”

Xander froze, and he was pretty sure his heart stopped. After a second, he forced himself to breathe, and he tried to sound natural as he said, “Yeah? What about?”

“She was there in the warehouse,” Giles reminded him. “I wanted to speak to her about it. She didn’t have much to add, however, and she seemed extremely out of sorts that you’d left town. Did you speak to her before you left?”

Xander tried not to die of relief. He collected himself, and said, “I did, and she was pissed off about who I was leaving with. She’s already called me once to check up on me. Can you tell her I’ll be fine?”

“I did,” Giles replied. “She wanted to know why on earth I’d let you go without any protection other than shotguns.” It sounded like Giles wasn’t sure of the answer himself.

Xander rolled his eyes. “Tell Faith that if she has any ideas about how to not be possessed, we’re all ears.” Giles huffed a little, and Xander asked, “How is that going, by the way? Any leads?”

“Some, but nothing concrete,” he sighed.

Xander hesitated, then said, “It’s okay, Giles. We’ll figure something out.”

“Right. In the meantime you’re completely without our protection, off in the middle of nowhere—“

“California,” Xander interjected quietly.

Giles hesitated, then said, “California? You’re in California already?”

He spoke carefully, and Xander could guess why. He sighed. “Yeah, we crossed the border from Arizona an hour ago, or something.”

“Xander—“ Giles broke off, and Xander could imagine him taking his glasses off, maybe cleaning them, maybe pinching the bridge of his nose. “Are you alright?”

“Sure,” Xander drawled, stretching the word out. He took another drag of his cigarette, exhaling slowly, and told himself he wasn’t lying that much.

“You haven’t been back, have you,” Giles said, and it wasn’t really a question. “You haven’t been back to California before now.”

Thankfully, that had already occurred to Xander, so he didn’t get a stab of panic at Giles’ question. And the urgency of it had faded anyway, lost among everything else he was worrying about. Now the only feeling being in California gave him was...emptiness.

He took a deep breath. “It’s fine, Giles. We’re only gonna be here long enough to get the weapon, and then we’ll leave. We’ll circle back around to a safe house or something, so we can come up with some kind of...plan of attack,” he guessed.

“Well, actually, what I was calling to tell you is that the weapon is going to be in Las Vegas, not Los Angeles.” There was something sheepish in Giles’ voice.

Xander paused, then repeated, “Las Vegas.” He rubbed a hand over his head, keeping the cigarette out of his hair and trying not to be too frustrated. He might not have felt that bad about being in California, but that didn’t mean he _wanted_ to be there. “That’s great, Giles. We passed the turn off to Vegas almost two hours ago.”

“Well, even with the vehicular problems, your group is making far better time than anyone expected. We thought you’d stop at some point to _sleep_. And I only received the location from our contact this evening, so I’ve called you straight away.”

The defensive snippiness in Giles’ voice was enough to make Xander feel like a bastard again. “Sorry, G-man. Just...even though it’s been fine, it’s still stressful, you know?”

He wondered vaguely whether that was one of the biggest understatements he’d ever made. Stressful. Well, it was one way to describe one of the longest nights of his life. Although, he’d had worse. One night in particular had definitely been worse. And _that_ one had been directly responsible for _this_ one, what did that mean...

Why the fuck was he even thinking about it? It was just plain depressing. And totally not relevant to what Giles was saying.

“Xander, I’d be surprised if you weren’t stressed. Personal relationships aside, this demon is no laughing matter.” And Christ, between Dean, her, and California, he’d almost forgotten about the demon again.

“Yeah?” he managed. “I mean, not that I was laughing about it anyway, but did you find something else?” He took the last drag of his cigarette, stubbed it out and immediately wanted to light another one. Hopefully the question hadn’t sounded too much like he was searching for distraction.

“No new information, but several new sources that agree on one specific point, that this creature is extremely dangerous.”

Xander had really no idea which twisted, perverted part of his brain decided that giving Giles a hard time was suddenly the best thing to do. Maybe because he had to vent his anger somewhere, and he knew for sure that Giles would forgive him for it. Whatever it was, he found himself asking, “Can you rate it on a scale?”

“Excuse me?” Giles said, bewildered.

“Well, can you rate it on a scale, against the other stuff we’ve faced? If the First is a ten, and Gachnar the Bringer of Terror is a one—“

“Fifteen, Xander,” Giles said flatly, obviously not amused at all. “And it’s coming after you.”

Every muscle in his body froze, seized up like he’d never be able to move again. The brief moment of flippancy was gone like it’d never happened, buried suddenly under a scattershot feeling of sheer panic.

But he tried to stay calm. He managed to breathe again after a moment, and said, “Okay. Okay, I can deal with that.” He was lying. Fifteen. Jesus Christ. _Worse than the First_. Holy shit, there was no way he was going to survive this.

“Alright, perhaps eight or so. Possibly seven,” Giles backtracked.

“What? Giles, for fuck’s sake, pick a number,” Xander demanded. What the fuck was up with the indecision?

“Seven, Xander, seven. I’m sorry, I didn’t think you were serious.”

Xander held his breath for a second. He had a rock in his stomach and a cold shiver going across his shoulder blades, but he exhaled and managed, “I wasn’t, but. Seven. You swear?” And it was ridiculous that after everything _this_ was making him panic – it had been a joke, _his_ joke.

“I swear,” Giles said, calming and sincere.

More deep breaths as Xander tried to slow his racing heart “Seven. Okay. Okay, that’s good.”

“This isn’t going to be like the First, Xander,” Giles said softly. “I’m sorry. I was merely trying to impress on you the _danger_.”

“It’s okay, Giles,” Xander said. He pulled out his cigarettes again, just to have something to do that wasn’t curl in a ball and cry. “It was my joke, it just backfired. Colour me impressed, though,” he added wryly.

Giles sighed. Xander thought about saying something else to kill the silence, but his hands were shaking again and he didn’t want to give himself away. He’d overreacted enough already; he didn’t need to give Giles any further hints about how fucking unbalanced he still was, about how the First still had him by the balls.

Xander shifted the phone to his other ear. Giles seemed to have paused, or gotten distracted or something, so after a few more moments, he asked, “So did you just call so I could give you a hard time? Or was there something other than how we’ve got to turn the car around and head to Vegas.”

“I’ve got a time and place,” Giles said, getting back to business.

“Yeah?” Xander perked up a bit. John would be thrilled, and also so, so pissed that he was asleep when the call came through. “Where and when?”

“After dark, in a bar away from the Strip.”

“No bright lights, check. Who am I meeting?”

“You’ll know them when you see them. Be armed and alert, Xander. I don’t expect this will be too dangerous, but nevertheless you should consider your exit strategy.”

“Just like Rottenrow, I remember,” Xander replied. It was pretty clear that Giles thought the job wasn’t going to suck too much, but also that the situation could turn on a dime. Which meant he’d considered the risks and the pay-off, and decided it was worth it.

And Xander didn’t really care. If he was ever going to get his life back – such as it was – they needed the weapon. He could deal with whatever came up. And he knew Giles wouldn’t send him in to anything too far above his skill level. Not without warning him first, at least.

“Do you have something to write the address on?” Giles asked.

“Just tell me. I’ll remember.”

Giles made him repeat it back about three times before he was satisfied that Xander wouldn’t forget.

“Okay then,” he said when Giles was finally happy. “We’ll head back, then, or maybe we’ll keep going to Barstow then loop back around or something. I’ll get Sam to check the map, work out which way will be quicker. And then I guess we’ll just wait until dark.”

“Xander.” Giles stopped, hesitating, and Xander tensed.

“What?” he said suspiciously. “Is there something else?”

“Well, yes and no. Earlier this evening, before I spoke to our contact, I also spoke to Willow.”

Willow. Xander’s world immediately ground to a halt. “Is she alright?”

“She’s fine. We spoke for almost an hour,” Giles said, and Xander had no idea why the length of the conversation was important but it made his brain kick into overdrive.

“Did you talk about me?” he asked, subdued.

“She called me to discuss the situation in China, and then she asked if I’d heard from you. I was surprised to hear you hadn’t spoken to her since she left Cleveland.”

It was a leading statement, and after a moment, Xander said, “I called, but she didn’t pick up.” He didn’t bother to hide the resentment in his voice, because the sudden thought that Willow hadn’t just not answered but might have actually _ignored_ calls from him was unexpected, and shocking in how much it hurt.

Giles had paused, then he said, “She called me just after they finished wrapping up a situation there. Perhaps she was unable to answer when you called.”

Cold comfort, and China suddenly felt like the other side of the universe, like it was somewhere Xander could never get to, no matter how hard he tried. The feeling of separation twisted in him, but he shook it off long enough to say, “Whatever. What did the two of you talk about, then?”

“Well,” Giles began, “I must admit I told her almost everything. About Dean and his family turning up on your doorstep, and that your demon and their demon are one and the same.” Another pause. “I also told her about Dean, that he wants to be with you and you are...considering it. I only spoke about it in the briefest way, and I left out quite a lot of what you told me the other night. I don’t believe I betrayed your confidence, Xander. I genuinely tried not to.”

Despite the reassurance, Xander still felt cold. “It’s okay, Giles, saves me from having to find the words,” he dismissed, then asked, “What did she say?” Giles didn’t say anything, and this silence made Xander’s stomach clench. “Let me guess. She wasn’t happy about the idea, that I’m considering it.”

“No, I’m afraid she wasn’t,” Giles conceded. A mix of hurt and hostility twisted in Xander, and he tried to tell himself he should have known. “She found the thought extremely upsetting, and I had to remind her several times that it was your decision to make,” Giles went on, then added, “I didn’t want her to upset you, not while you were trapped in the car with that family, so I told her not to call you.”

“You did?” Xander asked, startled. The hurt in him _paused_ at the idea. “...and she agreed?”

“It took quite a lot of persuasion. But she was quite emotional when I spoke to her, and while I know she has your best interests at heart, I made her promise not to harass you for at least three hours. I thought that might give her enough time to start thinking the situation through a little more carefully.”

“Three hours,” Xander mused. “She’ll either be calm, or she’ll be even angrier than she was before.”

“She wasn’t angry, Xander, she was worried. _Is_ worried,” Giles said. “For the same reasons I’m worried. Neither of us want to see you hurt by Dean, not again. Not after—“ Giles cut off, but Xander could follow that thought to its logical conclusion, he didn’t need Giles to say it. He swallowed heavily at the reminder.

Giles went on, changing tack slightly. “Anyway, I outlined your reasons as clearly as I could, and she relented and agreed not to call immediately. I think what finally convinced her was when I suggested only you would know when you had enough privacy to speak to her properly.”

Xander glanced back at the minivan at the mention of privacy. “Good point, G-man, privacy is a key issue here.” Sam was still watching him. Xander couldn’t tell if the others were awake yet.

And he’d been waiting for another rush of resentment, at Giles, at Willow’s radio silence. But now that the first stab of anger had faded away, all he could feel was a dark kind of relief. As awful as it sounded, it was true that he’d had enough going on, enough problems to deal with, without also dealing with Willow. If she wasn’t deliberately ignoring him, he was okay with it. Glad, even, that Giles had talked her out of calling.

“If you can call her now, or soon, I would recommend it,” Giles said. “I know she’s never had a very high opinion of Dean, but by the end of our conversation, I had begun to think she might listen to you.”

The implication being that without Giles’ intervention, she wouldn’t have listened. But Xander could deal with that, too. “Thanks, then. I do appreciate it, Giles. I’m just not sure what to say to her.”

“Tell the truth,” Giles suggested. “Tell her the things you told me the other night. I believe that would be the best way.”

“Do you really think my arguments were that persuasive?” Xander asked uncertainly.

“Yes, they were, actually. It’s your decision, Xander,” Giles reminded him.

And that was true, but Xander wasn’t sure whether it being his decision was a good thing or not. Probably not – his recent track record indicated he wasn’t very _good_ at decisions. “Yeah, okay,” he said anyway, even though he didn’t exactly agree.

Giles accepted it, though, and they said their goodbyes. Giles made him promise to call or text when they reached Las Vegas, and Xander could only hope his entire world wouldn’t have totally fallen apart by then.


	7. Got Wrong

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from a song by Biffy Clyro.

Xander flipped the cellphone closed and stared intently at his hands for a moment. He listened to the truck stop around him; a few trucks had come in while he was talking to Giles, and now he could hear the noise of idling engines and the occasional snippet of conversation. The sky was lightening, sunrise finally peeking over the low hills on the horizon.

Despite how hurt he’d been when he’d thought she was ignoring him, he didn’t want to call Willow.

She was his best friend, they’d known each other since kindergarten. She knew Xander better than anyone, no question about it, and if he asked her, she’d be able to help him with all the crap in his head. He had an idea about the demon that he wanted to run past her, as well, and she was the only one who could help him with it.

But right now, he just didn’t want to call. It felt like the wrong time, like it wouldn’t go well. His mood had plummeted after talking to Giles, not that he’d been in such a great place to start with, and on top of that, he was so tired. He was dealing with too much, his defences were worn down, he didn’t have the energy he knew it would take to convince her.

He didn’t want to _have_ to convince her. He didn’t want her to question his choices, not when his own attitude about them was so shaky.

He didn’t want to deal with her unwavering dislike for Dean, either.

Xander rubbed a hand over his forehead, back through his hair, then tried to ease the tightness in the back of his neck. He tried to gather his strength again, but it was hard when he resented the fact that he _needed_ to. He shouldn’t be this reluctant to talk to her.

She was upset, though. And she was waiting to hear from him.

Weighed with a sense of obligation – and how fucked up was that? He shouldn’t feel obligated, he should _want_ to talk to her – he stared at his phone for another long moment.

He didn’t have a choice, he reminded himself. Also, if he sat there for too much longer, one of the Winchesters might decide he was done and come over to chat.

Eventually, he flipped the phone open again and dialled. It rang. He braced himself. Fuck, he was so not in the right mood for this. But he should just...get it over with.

“Xander!” Willow answered, and Xander was surprised when a rush of desperate homesickness flowed through him. It was a more complicated feeling than the sheer relief he felt when he talked to Giles, but it was still there, if slightly tempered by how disconnected he felt from her.

“I’m so glad you called,” she said, sounding urgent. “I’ve spoken to Giles, I called him to talk about the situation in China and when I asked about you, he told me everything.”

“I know,” Xander said, but he barely got further than that before she interrupted.

“I can’t believe what’s been going on out there. Why didn’t you call me?”

As soon as the words registered, his hackles went up. All the hurt and frustration in him flared, because he had wanted to talk to her about all of this, and _she hadn’t been there_. “I tried,” he said sharply. “You didn’t pick up.”

She didn’t seem to notice the bite in his voice. When she spoke, she sounded apologetic but rushed. “I’m sorry, I must have been... There’s been a lot going on here, and I guess I haven’t checked my messages. Maybe my coverage dropped out or something, it can be a little patchy over here.”

He gritted his teeth, reminded himself that he could have left her a message and didn’t, and tried to let it go. “Okay,” he said, only the slightest trace of the bitterness he was feeling in his voice. “But hey, Giles has filled you in now, so I guess it’s fine.”

“He filled me in, Xander, and I can’t believe it! What on earth are you _thinking_?”

Xander bristled again, grit his teeth some more. She went on before he could say anything.

“I mean, going out on the road with them? With _John Winchester_? I can’t believe you let them talk you into this, I really can’t. It’s such a bad idea!”

He sighed. _Upset_. Yeah, this is exactly what he hadn’t wanted to deal with.

“Okay, firstly, going out on the road was my bad idea. No-one talked me into it, Willow,” he said firmly, trying to be calm and rational and all that. “The goal is to stop the big, scary demon, remember? We’re going to get a weapon, and then we’re going to fight it. That’s what’s going on, that’s what the plan is, that’s the _only_ plan.”

“Yes, but _John Winchester_? How can you be in a car with him? Isn’t he _saying_ things?”

He realised what kind of ‘things’ she meant, and winced. “Yeah, well. It turns out there’s been some confusion about exactly how John would react to Dean and me,” Xander said sourly. “He’s still an asshole, but he’s not actually that homophobic. He seems to want Dean to be happy.” Credit where credit’s due, he decided, it was one less thing to hate John for.

But the news sent Willow off on another tangent, one Xander felt spectacularly unable to deal with. “Do you mean to tell me that all these years, Dean could have been _honest_? Xander, what—“

He physically flinched at the question. “Look, stop. Okay? Just stop,” he managed. He took a deep breath, trying to quell the kicked-in-the-stomach feeling from the reminder of what Dean _could_ have done.

When he felt like he could, he went on. “I really don’t want to talk about all of that right now. All that matters is, yes, I’m on the road, yes, it’s a really stupid situation, but frankly, I don’t really have a choice about a lot of it. It’s the best way to get rid of this demon, and I’m so sorry _you’re_ so upset about it, I’m sorry this is so stressful for _you_ , but yelling at me isn’t exactly helping.” His voice was snappy by the end of it, shortened by the reminder that Dean _left_ , but also the feeling that he was reliving every other frustrating, disappointing conversation he’d ever tried to have with Willow about Dean.

“I’m not yelling,” she protested, surprised. “Xander—“ she began, then stopped.

He gritted his teeth and waited, but she didn’t seem to know what to say. “What, Willow?” he prompted, then warned, “I don’t really need your judgement right now.”

“I’m not judging you!”

“Not judging? Willow, you _just said_ you couldn’t believe the choices I’ve been making, and that what I’m doing is a bad idea. What the hell would you call that if it’s not judging?” She’d never approved, he remembered, she’d never understood and she’d never _listened_ to him when he said he knew what he was doing. He wasn’t going to let her do that again.

“But I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No? You sure about that? The choices I’ve been making might be fucked up, but they’re _my_ choices. It’s my life to fuck up, not yours,” he insisted.

“I know it’s your life, Xander, and I’m not trying to judge you for it. I’m just. I just want to know what you’re thinking.”

“Does it matter? No matter what I tell you, you’ll still radiate disapproval every time Dean’s name comes up.”

“That’s not fair,” she said, still protesting vehemently. “I haven’t even said anything about him.”

“Maybe not, but you should know that all the other times we talked about Dean when I was still with him, all your disapproval ever did was make me feel like I needed to lie to you about him,” he snapped.

“I can’t help it if that’s how you felt,” she insisted hotly. “God, Xander, what’s gotten into you?”

“Me? Nothing,” he replied. “You’re the one who’s so _upset_ by this clusterfuck. Not upset enough to pick up the phone, though, I guess.” He felt sick, and also like they were getting closer to a place he wasn’t sure he wanted to be.

“Giles told me not to call you,” she protested.

“But you ask me why I didn’t call _you_? What the fuck, Willow. I _called_ ,” he said, before she could respond to that. “I called, and you didn’t pick up.” He suddenly sounded more desperate than he meant to, and he hated the pleading tone in his voice.

It wasn’t anger that was bubbling up. It was _hurt_. He’d called, he’d _needed_ her, and she hadn’t been there.

“Xander, I’m _sorry_ ,” Willow said. “I shouldn’t have said that, and we should have talked sooner. But there have been so many problems here, and I’ve had to do all of it at once,” she added, and he could hear tears in her voice, too, which, God, he’d made her cry. Even when he was furious with her, it never failed to make him feel like such an _asshole_.

And, of course, she’d been _working_ while he’d been having his crisis. Fuck.

“End of the world?” he asked softly. It didn’t really excuse her knee-jerk reaction to anything and everything involving Dean, but it really, really excused her absence.

She took a couple of deep breaths of her own, shaky ones, and eventually said, “With us on the case? No way.”

He ran a trembling hand through his hair, took a deep breath, let the guilt really take hold. His anger and upset slowly died down, and some relief mixed in with the guilt. There was an averted apocalypse in the mix, it was always the best possible excuse. At least it meant she hadn’t been willingly making him wait.

And fuck, why the hell had he thought she would? This was Willow. Apocalypse or not, she was about as capable of totally ignoring him as he was her. All the distance in the world would never break the ties between them, he knew that. God, he was such a moron.

“Yeah. Look, Wills, I’m really sorry,” he said heavily. His headache was suddenly back with a vengeance. “I didn’t mean to flip out at you. I’m just. I’m really tired. And there’s been a lot going on here, too,” he added, remembering his relief that he hadn’t had to talk to her in the middle of everything else. “I should _not_ have jumped on you like that. I was being an asshole, and I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay, Xander, I’m sorry for what I said. I’m sorry I’m not there, too. I’d probably understand what’s going on a lot better if I was,” she admitted, and the compassion in her voice undid the last of his anger. He breathed out one last time, even more relieved.

“It’s okay,” he managed. Then he added, “You’d glare Dean to death, and then I wouldn’t even have the opportunity to fuck up my life again.”

She paused, and Xander admitted to himself that it was probably too soon to joke about that. Sure enough, her voice was serious when she asked, “Is that what you think you’re doing?”

He sighed, and thought about the question. She was actually asking, he should respond honestly. “No, probably not. But. Well, maybe.” Before he could think better of it, he admitted, “My life’s already pretty messed up, Wills. Dean can’t actually make it that much worse.”

What the fuck? He couldn’t believe he’d said something so stupid and obvious, actually admitted out loud that it wasn’t just Dean, because he was supposed to be _hiding_ all of that from her.

“Xander—“ she said, then stopped. He held his breath.

Then she surprised him by bypassing all the other possible responses to what he’d just said and asking, “How is Dean, anyway? How’s he feeling since the spells we did?”

There was an unreadable note in her voice, but he was more surprised that she’d even asked. “He’s fine,” he said carefully. “Is there anything we should be doing with that, by the way? Aftercare or anything?” he asked.

“No, not really. Plenty of sleep, eat properly, let the body recharge.”

“Okay, I think we’re kind of doing that,” Xander said.

“Did Giles tell you about the job?” she asked carefully, obviously shooting for a neutral topic. “He said he'd have a location for you soon, and that even though you have to do it by yourself this time, it should be easy enough. That’s good news, right?”

“Yeah, it is. It's going down in Vegas, apparently. And it’ll be good to have at least one weapon against this thing.”

Then, abruptly, she said, “About what just happened, and about what Giles told you. About how I was upset.” Her tone was serious, but composed.

Xander had just barely started to relax, but that had his hackles up again. “What about it?” he said, guarded.

“I _was_ upset, because I didn’t do that spell and fix Dean just so he could show up there and mess with you again,” she said fiercely.

Xander flinched a bit, but waited for her to go on. He knew what it sounded like when she was working up to something, when she had a point she was getting to.

Willow paused for a long time, and when she spoke again, she’d apparently calmed herself a little. “I didn’t expect him to come back to you. I didn’t expect him to _want_ to, because before the warehouse, everything I knew about your relationship made me think he wouldn't. But he has, and... If he hurts you, I swear he’ll pay for it. And until then... I mean. I was upset about the road trip because it must be hard for you, Xander. I didn’t mean for it to sound like I think you don’t know what you’re doing.”

He took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay, thanks,” he said. He believed her, too.

“And I guess it does make sense,” she added.

Xander frowned. “What makes sense, exactly?” he said cautiously.

“Well, I’m in China, and I’ll come back straight away if you need me to. But if no-one in Cleveland can help, and if this is the only way to get a weapon, well...despite the many things that are totally wrong about the situation, _they_ are probably the most invested in killing this demon. So _letting_ them is...fine, sort of. If you’re sure you can handle being around them.”

She sounded weirdly resentful, and her wording sparked a brief moment of amusement at the idea of _letting_ John do anything. But he believed her, again, which meant...amazingly, it meant his rant had actually worked, that she’d actually listened to him. Like she’d _heard_ him.

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” he said eventually, realising she was waiting for him to say something.

Then she said tentatively, “And Giles said that, you know, you’re thinking about it. About taking Dean back.”

Xander’s guard slammed back up, and he didn’t reply. He wasn’t sure what he could say without getting angry again.

“That’s still true, right? You’re still thinking?” she asked nervously.

“Yeah, I’m still thinking,” he admitted. “No life-changing decisions yet.”

“That’s good,” she said, a little too obviously relieved. “Not because they’re not your decisions to make,” she added hurriedly. “It doesn’t matter what I think about Dean, I’ll support all of your decisions about that.”

He waited uneasily, unsure how to respond.

“It’s just that a lot’s happened really fast,” she went on. “And I think it’s good that you’re taking your time, you know?” Her voice had an appealing edge, like she wanted him to agree with her.

“Okay,” he said, still guarded. He waited again, and when she didn’t continue, when it occurred to him that she was done, he blurted out, “That’s it? That’s what you wanted to say about it?”

“Yes,” she said, a slightly stubborn edge to her voice. “I want you to take your time and be sure, but in the end.” She hesitated for the briefest moment. “In the end, it’s your decision and I want you to be happy.”

Xander’s head spun a little. It didn’t sound like she was just repeating what Giles had said, although she could be. It sounded a lot like this was her actual decision, her actual reaction.

And even though it blew his mind a little, he took it at face value and thought carefully before he commented. On the one hand, it wasn’t exactly the unconditional support that if he was honest with himself, he’d never expected. But it wasn’t totally judging, either; it wasn’t a flat-out ‘don’t’, which was progress when it came to Willow’s attitude about all of this. And he could appreciate that.

“Okay,” he said simply. “I’m glad you get it, Wills. That’s all I want to do, is think about it. About Dean and me, and everything else. I just want to think.”

“I get it, I do, I promise. Are you okay?” she asked, and the simple concern in her voice was a huge relief.

It made it even harder to lie, though, harder not to tell her all the things he didn’t want her to know. Luckily, he still had no idea how to put most of it into words.

“Not really. Or. Well. Sort of,” he managed, and rubbed his eyes a bit. “I don’t know, I think I’m just tired. I was driving tonight, it was.” He realised where that line of thought would go, and abruptly changed tack. “Do you remember when we could stay up all night and be fine for school the next day?”

She paused, then said, “I remember when you used to sleep in math class a lot. And in the library.”

He snorted. “Yeah.” He hesitated again. He felt like he should say something else, like they should talk more, but he had no idea what about or where to start.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked quietly, apparently reading his mind.

“About math class?” he stalled.

“About Dean, and this road trip you’re on,” she said, not letting him get away with it.

While he was thinking about how to answer that, other than saying that even though they probably _should_ talk about it he still absolutely didn’t _want_ to, a truck went out of the lot, blaring its horn. “Where are you?” Willow asked, startled.

“A truck stop in California,” he replied.

“California?” she repeated anxiously, and Jesus, Xander didn’t want to talk about _that_ either. He just couldn’t win.

“Yeah, we crossed the border into the state an hour or so ago.” He paused, wondering whether he should even mention how many miles he currently was from Sunnydale, or whether it would be too telling that he _knew_. “You know,” he said, deciding to avoid the subject entirely. “Speaking of road trips, this whole experience has never, ever played out like I used to dream about in high school. In math class.”

“It hasn’t?” she said, indulging him in the distraction, even though she probably wasn’t sure where he was going with this. Which he figured was fair, since he wasn’t sure himself.

“Yeah, a minivan with Dean and his family isn’t exactly the free-wheeling sexy jazz experience Kerouac was talking about. Maybe it’d be different if I was hitch hiking, or sneaking onto trains or whatever.”

“I think they used to call that freight hopping,” Willow said helpfully.

“Yeah?” he said. “Good to know for next time. He said he loves me, Willow.” Xander looked up at the sky. “He never said that before.”

After a pause, she asked, “Is that a good enough reason to get back together with him?”

The question made him close his eyes, knocked all the breath out of him. It was _the_ question, the one he’d been worrying over, the one that would be keeping him up at night if he ever willingly wanted to sleep. And it was just like Willow to get straight to the point.

Xander scrambled for an answer, but too many emotions were trying to claw their way to the surface and it was a moment or two before he felt like he could even think properly. To stall, to fill the time, he finally let himself pull out another cigarette, balancing the phone between his cheek and shoulder while he tried to light it with shaking hands.

He exhaled some smoke in a thin stream, and said, a little helplessly, “I don’t know.”

She was silent, and he realised she was waiting. He searched fruitlessly for something else to say, then mentally threw his hands in the air and went for the truth. “I know you never really understood how I could feel the way I did about him, but you’re just gonna have to trust that I...I did feel. Very strongly,” he said, hating how raw his voice sounded. He had to take another deep breath with that admission, had to wait while the pain subsided a little more before he could go on.

“And I think you should also know that, despite everything that’s happened, despite the things that he’s done and the things...the things that I’ve done.” He paused again and swallowed heavily. “I’m pretty sure those feelings never really went away. And seeing him again... I don’t think they’re ever gonna go away.”

He had to stop, had to let himself breathe again. He took a nervous drag on the cigarette, heard her sharp inhalation when she finally worked out what he was getting at.

“I can’t just let him come back like nothing happened, I know that,” he finally went on. “It’d be different from how it was, and different from the way it would have been if he hadn’t given up. Or. If he hadn’t panicked about the demon and dumped me, I guess.” He stopped, wondering why he was still uncertain which one was true; he thought he’d already decided. It was probably something to obsess about another time.

“If I decide I can’t trust him anymore, though, I have to leave,” he went on carefully. “I have to say no to what he’s offering me now. And that’ll be...that’ll be so hard, Willow. As stupid and pathetic as it makes me, saying no to what he says he wants to give me is going to be fucking hard. I wanted it for so long, before, and I still. I still want it now.”

He heard a shaky breath on her end, but he didn’t want her to talk so he went on. “But then, with everything that’s happened to me, though, and...and totally taking Dean out of the equation, even...I don’t know if I’m ready for it, to be with someone like that again. With Dean, or with anyone. I don’t know if I _can_.”

And god, admitting that out loud was skating so close to the edge of that abyss in his mind. He had to clench his teeth, to ride out the weird feeling in his stomach, the pain behind his ribcage. He felt like one false move and he’d fall forever.

But the feeling started to pass, and when it’d dulled enough to be manageable, he took another deep breath. “So I don’t know what to do, you know? Fuck, I just keep hoping the answer will just come to me,” he finished.

He hadn’t wanted to talk about any of this again, not so soon. Once he’d started, it was too hard to stop, though, and maybe it was appropriate that he was essentially sitting in the gutter for this conversation, because it was definitely another low point.

He hated how everything was still so...unresolved. The indecision kept itching at him, even though at the same time he dreaded having to choose.

And even before Willow answered, he could feel her anxiety through the phone. “God, Xander,” she finally said, and it sounded like he’d made her cry again. “I hope it does too. I hope you figure it out.”

She had no answers for him. He’d known she’d have no answers, but hearing it out loud was hard. Even though he’d always resented her judgement, some part of him had wanted her to take the decision out of his hands.

“Yeah,” he said, voice a little duller. The moment of honesty had drained him, and he was tired again. “I have to figure out which option I can live with, I guess. He’s not pushing, either. He’s giving me space to make the decision.”

She paused, then said tentatively, “That’s good, right? That he’s letting you decide?”

“Yeah, it’s good,” he sighed.

“And you said you were taking your time,” she said, apparently thinking out loud. “Maybe there’s some kind of middle ground?”

“Maybe. He thought I was _dead_ , Willow. He’s so goddamn grateful I’m alive.” Another non sequitur, but he wanted her to know.

“He should be,” she said, with an intensity that surprised him again but also warmed him in that homesick place. “He should be _begging_ , Xander.”

“I don’t think that’d be a good thing,” he said, stumbling over the words a bit because the idea of Dean actually, literally begging was a little bit much. He had a sneaking suspicion Dean might, though, if it was what he thought Xander wanted. And wow, that was a mental image that was equal parts disturbing and amusing. “That’d be really weird, actually, but I’ll let him know you think he should.”

“Good, you tell him,” she said, sounding affectionate and relieved.

“You know, if I do get back together with him, you’re gonna have to be polite,” he warned, letting his amusement colour his voice a little so she’d know he was kidding.

“You mean I’ll actually get to meet him?” she said, mock-amazed, and not accusing at all. And Jesus, Willow and Dean had never even _met_. Xander forgot that sometimes.

“If you’re good,” he promised, surprised to find himself actually smiling. He would have thought he was too exhausted to be relaxed enough for it, but she’d managed it. It felt a little bit like his face wasn’t even used to the sensation anymore.

“I’ll be good,” she replied, heartfelt and a bit teary.

And that sounded too much like an apology. “Willow, you—“ He’d been about to protest, to take more of the blame for the rocky start to their conversation. He was the asshole, after all. But then he just said, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied, and it sounded like forgiveness. Xander almost smiled again.

Then Willow added softly, "You know, can I just say...I think you can, Xander. You're always at your best when you're loving someone. I know that better than most people." For a moment, he was on a hillside again and she was tearing at him, wild with grief. His breath caught. "You just need to work out if Dean deserves it," she finished, her voice still soft and warm.

Xander didn't know what to say. Her faith in him was amazing, and painful. Part of him wanted to ignore what she'd said because a lot had happened since Tara died, and Willow didn't know what had been going on in his head, in his heart. Her faith was based on his past, not his present, so he didn't think he could believe her. He knew he wasn't the same person he'd been.

Still, the temptation to take her word for it, to give in and let himself have what he wanted, was _so_ strong.

He felt warmth on the back of his neck, and was startled to realise it wasn’t Willow, it was the sun. It had risen behind him while he’d been on the phone, and even though it was weak, it was another kind of relief. He stubbed out his burnt-down cigarette and exhaled. When he breathed in again, he noticed a breeze had even made the smell dissipate a little bit.

Their short silence hadn’t been awkward, but Xander collected himself anyway, cleared his throat. “So, anyway, about this demon.”

“Yes, of course. Do you have any plans?” Willow asked, and he couldn’t resent the relief in her voice. He was glad to change the subject as well.

“Kind of,” he said. “I’ve been thinking, and I’ve had an idea, sort of. You’re not going to like it, but...remember Amsterdam?”

Willow stayed silent for a second, a different kind of silence, until she said, “ _Amsterdam_? No, Xander, are you crazy? You _hated_ what happened in Amsterdam. I hated it. Giles hated it, _everyone_ hated it.”

“I know,” he replied stubbornly. “But we could do it again, right? _Better_ , even, now that we know what it’s like.”

“Oh my god, you’ve lost your mind,” she said weakly.

“I haven’t. Giles is freaked out about this demon, Willow,” he said plainly. No point sugar-coating the situation. “He never gets freaked out anymore, and I just want...I just want a back-up plan, in case we need it.”

She hesitated, then asked, “How freaked?”

“I convinced him to rate it on a scale of one to ten, if ten is The First? He said fifteen, Willow. _Fifteen_.”

“What?” she exclaimed.

He could hear the panic in her voice, and quickly added, “When I started taking him seriously, he stopped exaggerating and changed it to seven, but still. The fact that he was freaked enough to even _say_ that...”

She hesitated for a long time, and he waited. “Xander...God, are you _sure_?”

“I know it’s dangerous,” he said, feeling calmer and more composed than he had all night. “But it’s not going to be plan A. It won’t even be plan B, more like plan F. Plan Z. I just want the option.”

He could tell she was considering it; he could practically hear her thinking. He held his breath and waited.

“Okay,” she finally said. “I’ll make the preparations.”

“Thanks,” he said, relieved. “Man, that’s a relief. It’s not that I don’t think we’ll come up with another plan, it’s just...it’s good to have a safety net.”

“I can’t believe an _Amsterdam_ is your idea of a safety net,” she muttered. “I’m not going to tell Giles, Xander. He’d freak out even more if he knew we were even thinking about this.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “It probably won’t even matter, we probably won’t even use it. I just—“

“I know, you want the back-up,” she interrupted. “And I guess, if Giles really is that freaked and the situation really is going to be that bad...I guess we should be prepared.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” he agreed, clearing his throat. He didn’t want it to come to an Amsterdam either, but he’d do it if it became necessary. It was a huge relief to have the option.

As he stared up at the sky, he realised maybe he’d get out of this alive. They’d get the weapon, and Willow had agreed to the back-up plan. Hell, even if the weapon fell through, maybe they could just... Maybe the Amsterdam would be enough. Maybe Dean would come out of all this unscathed. And maybe he would, too.

He suddenly realised how badly he wanted to. He didn’t want to get hurt, he wanted to survive this. Even if the feeling passed, even if he only meant it for this single moment right now, he _meant_ it.

He couldn’t help but feel like maybe it was a sign that The First was losing her grip on him. It was an unbelievable feeling to have, especially given the nightmare he’d just had. But it was real. He’d meant it.

Willow’s voice suddenly brought him back to earth. “Xander, you’ll call me, right? If there’s anything you need, or anything I can do. I have to stay here for another week, but then I’ll be back in the States and so help me, I will track you down,” she warned.

“I’ll call you. We’ll get together, Wills, I promise,” he said. He wasn’t totally sure whether to feel relieved or terrified by his sudden investment in surviving long enough for that to actually happen, but part of him almost wanted to laugh.

“Good,” she said. Then her voice softened as she said, “I should let you go. You probably have more driving to do.”

“Yeah, we do,” he said, and fuck, he was smiling. She said goodbye and hung up.

He sat there, stared up at the sky again. He couldn’t believe what’d just happened, that they’d actually just had that conversation. His smile had faded already, but he felt more relaxed than he had in _months_.

They’d finally buried the hatchet on the Dean issue. He hadn’t even realised how much it meant, how much it bothered him that she didn’t trust him to decide.

And aside from that, it probably helped that he’d been as honest as he could with her, more honest than he’d intended. Things had been difficult between them since Sunnydale; he hadn’t seen her much, and with the state he’d been in it had usually been easier not to call her, not to have to pretend he was okay.

When she’d been in Cleveland the week before, he’d felt stressed out, for no reason he’d been able to name at the time. He’d felt awkward a couple of times, like she was waiting for him to answer her but she hadn’t asked him anything. Or he’d been supposed to say something and hadn’t.

It was probably because, he realised, at some point, probably years ago, he’d unconsciously decided that Willow needed him to be the old Xander, the one she remembered from before he got too fucked up to function. And for a long time, whenever he was around her, he’d been pretending he was still that guy, without really being aware it was pretence.

He didn’t know why he was only able to admit it to himself now, but whatever. It was over, he knew what was wrong with himself now. He could be more honest with her about it, more honest with himself when he was with her, and at the same time he’d work at fixing some of what was wrong with him so it’d be less of an issue. Or, if that failed, he might just be able to hide it all from her a lot better.

Either way, it was a weight off his shoulders. Progress on his maybe-only-partly-fake-after-all list, too. As awful as everything had been since they left Cleveland, he’d actually made some progress. He could barely believe it.

And she’d agreed to Plan Z. Another weight off.

Slowly, as Xander sat there, the relief ebbed away a bit. God, he was tired. The headache he’d had on and off for the past week started grinding behind his eyes again, and he wanted some aspirin. Water, too. And food. No more coffee.

All he had to do was muster up the energy to get up and go back over the van. Any minute now.

He glanced over. Sam was gone, maybe gone into the gas station or to the bathroom or something, and John was reading the map. Dean had his door open, probably to let some fresh air into the van, and he’d twisted in his seat to put his feet on the ground and sit half-in, half-out.

When he saw Xander look over – he’d been staring again – he apparently took the glance as a cue that he was allowed to approach, because he slid off the seat and shut the door behind him. John looked up at the noise, and he looked between the two of them but didn’t get out of the van.

“Hey,” Dean said when he was close enough. Xander looked up at him, but Dean didn’t say anything else, just sat down next to Xander like he belonged there and stole his cigarettes. Xander was briefly undecided whether this was a good thing, whether Dean had decided there were fewer boundaries between them or something, but he gave up and decided to think about it later.

“Hey yourself,” Xander muttered belatedly. Another gust of breeze swept through the lot, and Xander shivered a bit. He shifted a little closer to Dean, wary of the cold.

“You okay?” Dean asked, exhaling a cloud of smoke.

“Yeah, just tired,” Xander replied. “I finally talked to Willow. Too much explaining, you know?” He could feel himself shutting down, like he was running out of batteries or something. It was early in the day to have used them all up; the hours stretching ahead of him were going to be hard.

Dean hesitated. “Ah. Yeah, I get that. Is she mad?”

Xander shook his head. “No, she’s fine. It’s fine.” He didn’t mention the Amsterdam. What Dean didn’t know wouldn’t freak him out. And god, he was tired, he couldn’t handle another conversation right now.

They sat there, quiet and exhausted for a moment. Dean smoked half a cigarette and didn’t speak again.

John came over after a while, apparently deciding it was safe after all. He stood above them, looking down at them sitting in the gutter, but he didn’t say anything about Dean smoking. “Everything alright?” he asked neutrally.

“Yeah. Giles called. The location’s changed. We have to go to Vegas,” Xander said bluntly.

Dean huffed out a cloud of smoke in surprise and stared at him, but John stayed calm. “Okay, we can do that,” he said evenly, his eyes still on Xander.

Xander just nodded. He was tempted to lean over, rest his head on Dean’s shoulder or something. John’s scrutiny wasn’t really stopping him, and neither was his reluctance to send Dean any more mixed signals than he already had. But he thought if he rested his head, he really wouldn’t be able to lift it again, and he didn’t want to stay there too much longer, the smell was too disgusting.

Sam walked back over from wherever he’d been, and when John heard him coming he said, “Apparently we need to head to Vegas, Sam. Alex talked to Giles.”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up, but he nodded. “Okay.” He thought for a second. “We should probably keep going to Barstow, then go north-east. It’ll be quicker than doubling back.”

John nodded as well. “Looks like,” he agreed gruffly, then turned his attention back to Xander and Dean. He studied them for a moment.

“What?” Dean asked, defiantly exhaling some more smoke.

“When you’re done, go get some food and get back in the car,” John said, and Xander could only describe the tone in his voice as almost _gentle_.

Before Dean could say anything, John turned on his heel and headed over to the store. Xander wondered vaguely whether he’d missed something there, but he was too tired to care.

“You want anything?” Dean asked softly.

He thought about it, or tried, then said, “I can’t decide. I’ll come in and look.”

Dean shoved himself off the ground, then turned to hold a hand down to Xander.

Xander looked at the hand, then looked up at Dean. Dean looked steadily back and raised an eyebrow. Xander mentally shrugged, put his hand in Dean’s, and let him haul him up.

He stumbled a little, ending up a little too far in Dean’s personal space in that stupid movie-meet-cute way. But it seemed like the movies were true, because it was like something caught them there in the moment, Dean’s face inches from his own and his hand warm around Xander’s.

For some reason, Xander suddenly remembered Dean’s car was missing. He stared at Dean, wondering how he was feeling and unable to flat-out ask. Dean looked back, and it looked like he was waiting for something.

The moment stretched, like so many seemed to between the two of them lately, and Xander was the first to look away. He squeezed Dean’s hand once, then dropped it, and with effort managed to step past him. Dean didn’t say a word, just followed Xander towards the store.

A few minutes later, they pulled out of the lot, heading for Barstow. Xander ignored the sandwich and soda on the seat beside him and frowned tiredly at the California landscape.


	8. Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from a song by Brandon Flowers.

The drive was mostly uneventful, unless the horrifically bad traffic counted for anything. It’d first backed up in Barstow, bumper to bumper, but cleared up enough after that so they could go faster through the flat, scrubby desert. 

Of course, then they hit what seemed like eight million different patches of construction between Baker and the Nevada state line, and what should have been a three hour journey blew out to five hours.

If this was what it took to get to Vegas, Dean was never going to bother with it ever again. He could probably make a small fortune hustling drunken morons in pool bars, but it wouldn’t be worth it without a decent escape route. Being surrounded by desert kind of creeped him out, too, for no reason he could really explain. Give him Atlantic City any day. Hell, even Reno.

He glared out the window at what seemed to be one last patch of construction before the road cleared again. Why they would choose to resurface a main road at eleven am on a Thursday, he had no idea. 

Someone started up a jackhammer just next to the car, and it startled Alex awake. Dean ground his teeth, furious. 

Alex had spent their whole five hour drive trying and failing to nap. Not because of Dean or anyone in the car – John had kept his own frustration with the traffic on silent, and so had Dean – but every time he looked to be dozing off, they’d have to stop the car or someone would honk, and he’d get jerked awake. He’d finally fallen into a doze about an hour back, and now some asshole with a jackhammer had woken him up. Dean wanted to kill someone.

Alex glared out the window in the direction of the jackhammerer, then sunk back down in his seat. He stared dully out the window. Dean thought about saying anything, but what the hell would he say? Sorry you can’t sleep? What good would that do?

Deciding he would never come back to Vegas as long as he lived, he gave up and hunched down a little further in his seat. 

Finally, they cleared the last of the construction work, and made it into the Vegas suburbs. They’d decided hours earlier that the first thing they would do was head for the bar. Sam pulled out a map, and he and John got to navigating.

Dean watched the low buildings slide past. The other problem with this place, aside from the desert and the construction workers, was the people. Even though they weren’t anywhere near the Strip, there were still people everywhere, which was fucking dangerous for them. After what happened in Jefferson City, Dean wasn’t sure he’d be comfortable around lots of people ever again. Too many opportunities for the demon.

Anxiety crawled down his spine, and he glanced around the van, taking in the tightness around his father’s eyes and Sam’s tight grip on the map. They were both a low-grade kind of tense, and Dean could practically hear his father’s brain grinding away, running contingency plans. He was probably flipping out about how much they didn’t know about what was going to go down, too, which couldn’t be helping.

But it was Alex’s show. His contact, his friends. Even though the whole thing sounded shady; Alex didn’t even know who they’d be meeting. He’d apparently recognise them, whoever they were, and they all just had to trust that no-one would fuck them over.

John didn’t like it. But he didn’t have a choice.

Dean didn’t like it either. He trusted Xander to know what he was doing, to make the meet and get them all out without getting anyone killed, but this was trusting Giles and the Council as well, and it did make him...itchy. However, this was about the weapon, and Dean felt like he’d do just about anything to get a way to kill the demon. Almost anything.

It’d make him feel better if Alex didn’t look quite so exhausted. It was like a blanket, draped over his shoulders, and Dean couldn’t help but worry about him. And the most frustrating part was that there was nothing Dean could do to help. Alex was the only one the contact would talk to; Dean and the others were just going to be passengers, so as much as he wanted to take some of the weight off, he couldn’t, and it was kind of killing him.

Which, actually, was pretty damn true of their whole relationship at the moment. Dean’d still give anything to be able to fix all the shit wrong with Alex, the stuff he’d fucked up _and_ the stuff that had nothing to do with him. He’d do anything he could, only he didn’t have the right to even _ask_ about half of it, anymore. 

And fuck, thinking about all of this wasn’t exactly helpful. It was just making his stomach twist that much sharper.

Dean stared grimly out his own window, reminding himself that all the ways to fix all of that stuff, all the things he could do to make Alex stop looking so goddamn worn out, would involve blowing off the meet, maybe even the whole hunt. And they couldn’t do that. There were so many reasons why they couldn’t, and Alex himself was at the top of his list.

Any other job and Dean would have packed it in with no remorse, to hell with the consequences. 

As it was, all he could hope was that after they staked out the stupid bar, they could spend the rest of the day catching some shut-eye in a motel or something. He tried to comfort himself with the fact that at least Alex had napped a _little_ during the hellish drive into Vegas, even if it didn’t seem to have helped that much. 

Then Dean pulled his attention back to reality, because Sam gave John one last direction and said, “There. It’s that one.” John pulled into a street park, and shut the van off. They all ignored the horrible noise the engine made.

Because there it was, just across the street. Dean frowned; it was weird, he decided, that something so important was going to go down somewhere so ordinary-looking, in such an average, non-descript bar. Dean had been in a million bars just like it, and he knew it’d have shitty carpets, a few pool tables, and the same crowd for happy hour every night. This was Vegas, so there’d be a few slot machines, but that’d be the only thing to make it different.

He turned to Alex and asked, “Anything that makes this bar more special than the five million other bars in Vegas?” 

Alex had been staring at the bar with a vaguely apprehensive look, and he looked over at Dean and shrugged. “Probably not. Less security cameras than the bar down the street?” he guessed.

Dean nodded. They all watched the bar for a few minutes.

“Okay, I’m going in. Alex?” John eventually said.

Alex hesitated. “No, I’ll stay out for now,” he decided. “Do you think you could scout the exits for me?”

“No problem.” John didn’t even ask why Alex wouldn’t go into the bar; he just got out and slammed the car door, checking for traffic so he could cross the street. Sam hesitated for a second, and Dean saw him glance in the rear view mirror. He must have decided that either Dean and Alex needed privacy, or that he didn’t want to be stuck in the car with them. Dean caught sight of a slightly scared expression in the rear view, then Sam got out and followed John.

Dean decided not to be insulted.

Beside him, Alex sighed. He was staring at the bar with a frown on his face. Dean glanced over, and before he could bite his tongue he asked, “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired.” It was exactly the same response he’d got last time he asked; he didn’t think Alex even realised he was repeating himself. But it was fine; he definitely was tired, and Dean didn’t want to piss him off. 

For a while, the silence between them was only broken by the sound of passing cars and nearby people. Dean thought about coming up with some trivial shit to talk about, but Alex didn’t really seem in the mood. And sure, he could have asked about all the non-trivial shit, but Alex was probably even less in the mood for that, and Dean didn’t want to push. It wasn’t like he wanted to talk about his own shit.

In the end, he settled for staring out the window again. He eyed the pedestrians, tracked slow-moving cars, listened to Alex send a text, probably to Giles, and overall tried to keep his paranoia under control. 

Alex’s phone chimed with an incoming text. Dean raised an eyebrow at him, ready to deal if it was something he needed to be aware of, but Alex just said, without even looking up from his cellphone, “It’s only Giles. Some info about the weapon. He’s going to email me some more background on it later tonight.” 

Dean nodded and looked away again. Which meant he missed it when Alex started staring at him, glancing over more and more. Alex’s frown grew thoughtful. If Dean had seen it, he might not have been so surprised when Alex spoke.

“What about you? Are you okay?”

“Me? What?” Dean looked over, surprised. Alex had a concerned look on his face, like somewhere beneath all the exhaustion he actually gave a shit. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he managed.

Alex hesitated. “Well, I mean. The car,” he said awkwardly. Dean grimaced, and turned away again. 

Alex didn’t give up, just changed tack. “I asked Willow about you. About your head, and whether there’s any aftercare or anything. She said you just need to eat regularly, get enough sleep, that kind of thing.” Dean looked over just as Alex added, with a mocking twist to his mouth, “She said you should take it easy for a while.” 

Dean snorted, because if there was any time in his life when ‘taking it easy’ wasn’t an option, that time was now. “Sure, I’ll take it easy.”

Alex half-smiled, then his expression turned serious. “With the meet tonight, and whatever happens after, just. Just take care of yourself, okay?” he said awkwardly. He wouldn’t meet Dean’s eyes.

The real concern in Alex’s voice took Dean a little by surprise, and not only because it was just a meet, even with the caveat that everything could and probably would go wrong. “I will,” Dean promised, and he meant it. The idea that Alex was worried about him... Well, Dean could have guessed Alex didn’t actually want Dean to die, but outright saying it... Dean tried and failed to stop the hope that started lighting up inside him.

Desperate to change the subject, he cleared his throat and said, “So, Willow. She wasn’t mad or anything?” He’d known for a long time that Willow wasn’t his biggest fan. Alex hadn’t really explained why in so many words, but Dean could guess.

“Of course she was mad,” Xander replied plainly, oblivious Dean’s grimace. “So was I. But we sorted it out.” And he sounded positive about that, which was another surprise.

Dean mulled that over for a moment. “So...the two of you are good?” he hazarded. He wanted to ask why they’d been mad, whether they’d fought, but he was pretty sure Alex would just wave it away. 

“Yeah, we’re fine. Better than we’ve been in a while, even.”

Another comment Dean wasn’t sure if he should pursue. “Well, that’s good.” He paused, trying to think of a less fraught conversation topic than Willow. “Is there anything else we should know about tonight? About the meet, I mean.”

Alex hesitated, and for a second Dean thought he was actually going to tell him something, that there was something he'd been keeping back. “No, I don’t think so,” he said softly.

“Okay,” Dean replied, deciding Alex must just be anxious. Then he hazarded, “Are you sure there’s nothing I can help with? It feels like you’re going to do all the work, and we’re just hanging.”

Alex shrugged. “It’s just a meet,” he said, looking out the window. Then, without looking over, he added, “If something does go wrong, chances are I’ll know how to get us out. I’ll need you all to follow my lead and do what I tell you, without asking too many questions.”

“That sounds fair,” Dean promised, without a second thought.

“Hopefully John will do the same,” Alex commented, and yeah, he probably had a point there. 

“I’ll back you up,” Dean shrugged. “He’ll behave as long as we remind him that you’re getting him out of a mess we got you into. And he’ll probably do whatever you want if we’ve got the weapon.”

Alex hummed a bit, not agreeing or disagreeing. Then he said softly, “I appreciate that, though. That you’ll back me up. It’ll probably make things easier.” He finally met Dean’s eyes again, and while Dean was surprised to see something that looked a little like guilt, his hope grew warmer when the moment hung between them, heavy and tense. Then Alex blinked, retreated, and it was over. 

Dean looked away for a second, trying to hide his own emotions again. They were hard to press down on, hard to get under control.

After a moment, Alex said casually, “You know, there’s something else I could use your help with.”

“Yeah?” Dean said hopefully.

“Make sure John doesn’t kill the contact?”

Dean was momentarily stunned. “What? Why do you think he would?” For a second, he felt a little insulted on John’s behalf, and then torn between that and the fact that this was _Alex_.

“I don’t, not really. But there’s a small chance the contact won’t be human,” Alex explained. “Judging by this bar, they’ll be human enough to pass, so this might not be an issue at all. But if they suddenly turn green or sprout horns, I don’t want John to shoot first.”

 _Oh_ , Dean thought, and frowned. “Why not just warn him?” It seemed like this would be easier, rather than risking someone – something? – getting hurt.

“I will. But you said you’d back me up, so I was hoping that you’d back me up with this in particular.”

After a beat, Dean said, “Sure. Yeah, of course.” He’d wondered, for a second, why Alex had even agreed to bring them on this meet if he had so little trust in John. But then he remembered the fight in Cleveland, and realised Alex still didn’t really _know_ John. He’d brought them on this because he knew Dean, so asking Dean to manage John in the event of any surprises wasn’t exactly asking too much.

Besides, in the bright daylight that was midday in Las Vegas, the dark circles under Alex’s eyes looked even worse. Dean could understand why he wanted to try and cover for any contingencies.

And then, before he could think it through, he said, “Maybe if everything works out, someday you can give Dad some more Hellmouth 101 lessons.” It was meant to be casual, a comment to ease the tension. But Alex frowned.

“’If everything works out’?” he parroted back softly, and Dean wanted to swallow his own tongue. 

“I didn’t mean.” He stopped, cursing internally. “I didn’t meant it like that,” he forced out, abruptly so, so sick of guarding his words about what he wanted, purely so he didn’t drive Alex away. “I wasn’t talking about us, I was talking about...if we get through the meet and live through this hunt, all of that. I’m sure they’d appreciate any information you’d give them,” he said, feeling formal and stiff. He didn’t need Alex to remind him that he’d never promised to be around in the aftermath of all of this; the hope he’d briefly indulged in was gone already.

Alex was silent, and Dean kept his eyes averted, jaw clenched. He stared out the window without seeing what was out there.

Then, after a long pause, Alex said, “You think they’d be interested in something like that, sometime?”

Dean looked over. Alex’s voice had been too guarded for Dean to even guess at what he really thought about the idea, and he had a slight frown, but the only thing Dean could guess from the look on his face was that he felt slightly thoughtful. 

However, Dean was suddenly very aware that this conversation had gotten a lot more dangerous than he’d planned. He thought very carefully before he spoke. 

“I know they would. But, you know, stuff like that, I think it can wait,” he eventually replied. He paused again, still feeling like he was balancing on a tightrope over a minefield, then added, “I think a lot of stuff can wait, you know? There’s so much going on, and if we make it through all of this, maybe. Maybe everything can wait until we just. Rest.”

It sounded so stupid, like he was backtracking on his own suggestion, but he had no idea how else to explain what he wanted. And he felt compelled to be honest.

Alex didn’t say anything, and Dean felt like his face was burning. Before he could stop himself, he started to add, “And then you can—“ He stopped. God, what the fuck? Why the fuck was he even talking about this? He was such a moron. 

He laughed sheepishly. “Sorry,” he said awkwardly, rubbing his forehead and trying to ease the headache back away from behind his eyes. “Ignore me, I guess. I’m just.”

Tired, miserable, and desperate for a way to make Alex look less strung out, less exhausted. He didn’t finish the sentence, though, even if there were a couple of options.

Because sure, he wanted the weapon, he wanted the demon dead, he wanted...something, from Dad and Sam. But right now, mostly he wanted him, Alex, a room and a goddamn bed to tackle Alex down onto. Not even for sex, just to make him lie the fuck down and _sleep_. They could sleep until they weren’t so worn out, and it’d be a goddamn weight off Dean’s mind to see Alex relaxed.

And he was tired of waiting, even though he knew he deserved it. He hated the walls between them, hated the double-speak, hated the way they were tiptoeing round each other. Hated the way there was fuck all he could do about it, because it was all his fault anyway.

He knew Alex was watching him closely, but Dean kept his eyes on the window, staring out at the street and the bar, breathing the suddenly-stifling air in the van and berating himself for being an idiot. Every time they connected, Alex allowed it for a few moments and then retreated again, walling himself back up behind his eyes. And Dean could understand it, knew he certainly didn’t deserve any different, but it was one more hateful reminder about what he’d done to them.

But then Alex spoke again, quietly and without much inflection in his voice. “I wouldn’t object to that, I guess. A rest.”

Dean’s gaze snapped back to Alex, and he stared. Alex was staring back at him, looking a little uncertain, and still guarded. But he also looked tired, so maybe Dean shouldn’t be surprised that he was considering the idea. 

“Yeah?” he said breathlessly, hope in his chest. It felt like a fist squeezing his heart. He couldn’t bring himself to leave it there, though, had to be sure that Alex figured on resting _with Dean_. “You mean that? You think that, after this is over, we could...we could really take some time? You’d want that? With me?”

Alex looked away again, out the window. “Probably,” he shrugged. “I mean, we’ve got no idea how or when all of this is really going to end, but. I mean, I said we needed time, so. It’d make sense.”

Dean felt lightheaded. “You did say that. Yeah, you did. Okay,” he managed, and had to look away out his own window. Jesus Christ. 

He had something to look forward to. The idea had that hope blazing even brighter inside him, a warm spot in his chest, hidden somewhere secret and careful, and abruptly he could breathe easier, too. When he finally mustered the balls to look over again, Alex still looked just as worn out but also a little easier around the eyes, maybe, a little less tense in the shoulders. Like they had an agreement, and it was a weight off of _both_ of them.

Before Dean could get too caught up in how weightless, how goddamn hopeful he suddenly felt, he turned his head and spotted John and Sam coming out of the bar, done with their recon. He forced himself to concentrate, and then he realised his father was limping.

“How was it?” Alex asked when they were back in the van, slamming their doors.

“Looks like any bar,” John said. “We scoped the exits, so we’ll find a motel, go over the plan.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that,” Alex said. John offered him a slight smile, and Dean took a second to be amazed that two people he’d worked so hard to keep apart were not only sharing air but working together. It was so weird.

They pulled out, and Dean gathered himself. “So, hey, Dad? I don’t mean to bring up bad blood, if there is any, but didn’t Sam shoot you in the leg?”

John and Sam exchanged a look. Dean frowned, and persisted.

“No, seriously. I didn’t even remember it until just now, but I know he shot you. How are you even walking right now?”

John hummed a little, then said, “Well, son, to tell the truth, for all that the colt is a powerful weapon in a lot of ways, it turns out it ain’t actually that much when it comes to actual firepower.”

Dean frowned again. “What does that mean?”

“Means it was just a flesh wound. They dug the slug out, patched me up, and my leg actually feels pretty good, considering.” Then he cleared his throat and added with a slight smile, “Nothing important got hit anyway, and Sam, that reminds me, we’ve gotta work on your aim.”

Sam was, predictably, slightly outraged. “There’s nothing wrong with my aim! I wasn’t aiming for anything important, that was the point, Dad, jeez.”

Dean snorted, trying not to laugh. Sam glared at him. 

“So, wait, Sam shot you?” Alex asked, looking intrigued. 

“Yeah,” John replied easily. “I was possessed.”

“Oh, this was in the cabin,” Alex guessed. 

“It wasn’t exactly a high point for us,” Sam interjected. 

“No, I guess not.” Alex looked thoughtful, like he would have said more, but at that moment, John pulled into to a motel – the closest one to their bar, they’d only been on the road for five seconds – and his expression sort of collapsed like the proximity of beds was enough to make him feel his exhaustion again.

The brakes squealed as John eased them to a stop, and the engine shuddered and hissed. “I vote we get a new car before we leave Vegas,” Dean muttered, opening his door and glad to get out of the damn van. 

Sam snorted from the front seat, and John grimaced in agreement. “That’s actually not a bad idea,” he said. 

Dean rounded the back of the van just as Alex did, and their eyes met. For a moment, they were caught in each other again. It was so easy, and Dean couldn’t wait for it to be even easier. He knew Alex hadn’t promised him anything, but Dean had hope.

He’d get them to that room with the bed, wherever it’d be, or die trying. 

***

A room with a bed was actually where they ended up for the day, but it was in the trashed-looking motel John had stopped at, and John and Sam were in there with them, so it absolutely didn’t count.

They hit up the diner next door before they settled in. Alex picked at his food, and what he did eat barely seemed to revive him. Dean’s anxiousness about how exhausted and shut down Alex was had been eased a little by the conversation they’d had in the car, but he was still looking forward to making him sleep, no matter who else was there.

By the time they went back to the motel, Dean was crashing too. The room was the usual dingy affair, with an added dry, dusty feel that Dean decided must somehow come from the desert, even though there were a whole lot of suburbs between it and the motel. He didn’t give a shit, though. As soon as they dragged themselves through the door, he dropped his bag and slumped gratefully on one of the rickety dining set’s chairs. His head was pounding, and the aspirin he’d taken with his food had yet to kick in.

He watched as Sam pulled out the salt and got to work lining the windows. John hefted the bag full of research and books up onto the table – for a second, Dean honestly thought the thing would collapse under the weight, so he edged back – and Alex just stood there.

He looked around, a frown on his face. Dean watched him, waiting for whatever he was about to say and thinking about how Alex looked about as bad as he felt.

“Yeah, so I’m just gonna take a nap,” Alex finally muttered, once the room had passed inspection. He walked over to the bed by the window, unceremoniously slung his bag into the corner, and sat down and started pulling his boots off. 

Dean didn’t say anything, but for a moment he did wonder whether Alex would take his clothes off in front of them all or not. He wasn’t surprised when he didn’t; Alex paused long enough to grab a stake from his bag and shove it under his pillow, then he stretched out on top of the covers in his jeans and sweatshirt without saying another word. 

Dean frowned, and turned to face the table. His headache would recede, he could read something, he could keep himself occupied. Alex needed to sleep, and it was fine. Dean would stay awake.

But even as he pulled a book from the pile – at random, he didn’t even know what language it was in – he glanced over at the bed again.

Alex’s socked feet were pointing in his direction, and the angle he was at only just hid his face from Dean’s view. There was an empty space behind him, a stretch of bedspread. 

Since Dean couldn’t see his face, though, he couldn’t tell if the uncomfortableness along Alex’s spine was him waiting for Dean to curl up behind him, or if it was just the usual tension of waiting to fall asleep. Or an all-too-likely third option, like the stress of turning his back on three people he didn’t necessarily trust.

“You can sleep too, you know,” John suddenly said from his seat beside Dean. His voice so low it was almost a whisper. Dean shot a look his way. “With him,” John added, gesturing at Alex.

“I know. I don’t need your permission,” Dean replied defensively, although he wasn’t completely sure whether he should be riled up by that or not. He hesitated, feeling unsettled. And it wasn’t because of John, or Alex and the bed. He knew he wanted to sleep with Alex, as much as he didn’t know whether Alex wanted him to. But regardless, something felt weird.

John dropped his gaze back to the weapons on the table, and said evenly, “Dean. Go and lie down.”

Dean glared at him, frustrated by the unnameable, niggling feeling he was getting. John wouldn’t look up, though.

Dean looked back over at Alex. He wasn’t asleep, still, and could have heard them. Which didn’t really matter, Dean supposed.

After a few more minutes, during which Sam crashed out on the other bed, and John casually said that he wasn’t too tired and could keep first watch, Dean decided that whatever restlessness he was feeling, he was going to have to get over it because Alex looked vulnerable. Something about the curve of the back of his neck and the skin there, something about the way he was still wearing his jeans.

He didn’t look as comfortable as he could, and maybe it wasn’t the answer but Dean got up, walked over, and sat carefully down on the other side of the bed to get his boots off.

No reaction from Alex, and Dean lay down behind him with a sigh.

He stared at the ceiling. It wasn’t John, and it wasn’t Alex, not really. It was...foreboding. The meet started at sundown, and Dean couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to go wrong. They were getting close to the demon, _so_ close, and it was everything Dean’d had nightmares about.

Intellectually, he knew it had to be done. They needed the weapon, they had to kill the demon. Alex would never be safe otherwise. They _had_ to get this done.

But Dean had a lot to lose, now. Alex was a lot to lose. Seeing him in the motel room, even just innocently stretched out on top of the bedspread, was a vivid reminder of their shared past, of everything Dean had already given up once; everything it’d kill him to lose a second time. 

If only the risk wasn’t so big. The thought that they could fail, that the demon could find them, find Alex before they were ready...

Dean suppressed the shudder and rolled onto his side, facing Alex’s back. He looked and looked, obsessively memorising the rise and fall of Alex’s breathing, the slight shifts in muscle when he moved his arm, the patterns his hair made against the skin on the back of his neck. It was all he could do not to reach out and touch.

He stared for a long time, and even as he was falling asleep he knew it could never be long enough.


	9. Battery Acid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from a song by Queens of the Stone Age.

When Dean finally fell asleep, John decided to give them three and a half hours. Any less time, and they might as well have not slept at all, but it couldn’t be longer. They’d need a window to go over the situation again – John couldn’t quite bring himself to call it a _plan_ , the vagueness about what the hell they were walking into meant it didn’t deserve the word – and hopefully he’d be able to come up with a couple of strategies in case something went wrong.

Once he knew Dean was asleep, though, and before John got too engrossed in contingency planning, he spent a moment just looking at his son and his boyfriend. Or ex-boyfriend, or whatever the hell they were calling themselves. 

He knew that, despite all the other stuff that was going on, the two of them were trying to sort through their collective baggage. He knew the relationship was still completely uncertain, that it could still go wrong and they could be driven apart for any number of reasons, and he knew it wouldn’t pay to bank on anything. But he’d been keeping an eye on the slow progress, trying to make sure he didn’t hinder it any more than he already had. 

Normally, he would have been pissed that all the boyfriend crap was distracting Dean from the hunt. And not just any hunt, either, this was the _demon_. But he couldn’t bring himself to even go there, and he knew it wasn’t just the risk to his own relationship with Dean, or the way the last of his son’s loyalty was hanging by a thread. 

As he thought about it, he wondered if it might have something to do with the way seeing them together, even just sleeping next to each other like they were right now, was getting less and less strange to him. It felt more and more like something John was surprised he felt strange about, like something that fit, even though he knew he’d never really seen it before.

It was bizarre, for Dean to suddenly have this boyfriend and for John to feel so completely... unsurprised. Almost reassured. He felt like his own reaction made no sense.

But it didn’t matter. Alex was valuable, and not just for his contacts, but for the way John knew he could make Dean blindingly happy. And he wanted that for Dean. He’d never thought much about his son’s future, apart from training him up so he could survive long enough to have one, but now he knew what he wanted it to look like. Maybe that was why none of the rest of it seemed to matter. 

John cut off the line of thought before he could jinx anything, reminding himself that one false move from Dean, or from him or Sam, and Alex would say goodbye to all of them. Nothing was certain when it came to that kid, John had to remember that. 

Right now, it was good that they were sleeping, though. They’d both looked like they could use the rest, and it was almost impressive that they could manage it even with bright afternoon sunlight filtering in through gaps in the curtains.

John returned to his review of the information they’d collected so far, and when he’d gone through it all, he drew a rough map of the bar, with entries, exits, features, places where weapons might be stashed and notes on items that could be improvised into weapons. He tried to spend some time running possible scenarios, but not knowing exactly what was going to go down frustrated the hell out of him. How was he even supposed to work out the back-up plans?

Under normal circumstances, going into a meet like this with only the word of some shady organisation, some ‘trust us’ from a group he had no affiliation with, would never happen. He’d never let the boys come in on something like this, and he might risk it himself but not without negotiating for more information.

Briefly, he considered what would probably happen if he tried to convince Sam and Dean to stay out of it, to let John and Alex go in without them. Once, maybe they would have obeyed, but after Colorado, he was pretty sure they’d just lie through their teeth, wait ten minutes, and follow anyway. Hell, given the circumstances, Dean would probably just outright refuse. 

But, John realised slowly, it was Alex’s contact, and John might not trust the Council, but he trusted Alex to know what he was doing. 

He didn’t know _why_ , exactly. He’d never seen the kid work a job, he’d never even seen the kid fight. But the kid said it’d be okay, and John actually believed him. 

Chalk it up to that weird feeling, maybe, the feeling that Alex just _fit_. 

Which didn’t mean he didn’t think it could still all go to shit; it just meant it probably wouldn’t be Alex’s fault. With that in mind, John pulled the laptop over and pulled up a Vegas street map. He could at least pick out a couple of exit routes, and a meeting point in case they got separated. And he made a mental note to pack everything back into the car. They shouldn’t leave anything in this motel, in case they couldn’t come back.

He got a little caught up working out the best routes out of the city and internally cursing the fact that they were surrounded by desert. He was about to start working out where the best place to steal a new car would be when the quickening breaths on the other side of the room finally caught his attention.

As soon as he realised the extra sound in the room was panic, John turned quickly to check what was wrong.

It was Alex. He still looked sound asleep, at first, but as John leaned over a little to get a better angle, to look at his face, his breathing got even faster. His face was furrowed with confusion and fear. 

Obviously a nightmare, but John hesitated. Should he wake him? The poor kid had only been asleep for a couple of hours, and if the nightmare passed, maybe he could still get some more rest. But then again, if John woke him, maybe it’d loosen him from the dream and he could go back to sleep after anyway?

As he watched, Alex flinched hard, jerking back away from whatever his mind was tormenting him with. The fingers of his visible hand clenched in the sheets, and his body seemed to curl up a little, bending knees and a hunch in his shoulders.

Without really thinking about it, John left his seat and moved closer to the kid. He couldn’t leave him like this, he had to wake him up out of whatever it was. Just as he got close enough, though, the kid flinched again, then woke with a choked-off gasp.

John froze, unsure what to do. The kid’s eyes had flown open, but he stared blindly in front of him. He squeezed them shut, and John took the opportunity to back up quickly, to retreat to the chair opposite where he’d been sitting before. It kept him in view of the kid’s face but it was far back enough that the kid probably wouldn’t feel crowded. 

Alex was breathing like he’d just run a marathon, and after a moment or two, he brought a hand up to his eyes and rubbed them. He rolled onto his back, taking deep breaths and obviously trying to quell whatever panic was leftover from the dream. He seemed to have worked out where he was – he turned his head to look at Dean for a long moment, studying his sleeping face – and most of the tension slowly seeped back out of his body.

John waited, resting his elbows on his knees, expecting Alex to look around and finally notice he was there. It was a mistake, though, because Alex _didn’t_ notice, didn’t realise he was being watched. Instead he rolled away from Dean, back onto his side, and buried his face in his hands. He didn’t make a sound, didn’t breathe that much differently, didn’t react in any other way. But John knew he was seeing another glimpse of the pain and distress that was below the controlled surface the kid had been projecting, and he knew it wasn’t something he was supposed to see.

He wasn’t stupid; he’d noticed Alex only seemed to let his expression crack when he was alone, unobserved. John didn’t think he’d appreciate exposing himself, especially if he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. Which left John in an awkward position; he’d seen what he’d seen, Alex would know he’d seen it, and John was pretty sure nothing good would happen when Alex was confronted with his complete lack of privacy.

Aside from that, though, it bothered him that the nightmares were this bad. Clearly, the kid had impressive defences, and the fact that he was keeping everything walled up behind them was a problem in itself, but John didn’t like the fact that these nightmares were so obviously breaking him down. It didn’t _surprise_ him – John had heard enough about the First to believe it wasn’t something the kid could’ve lived through unscathed, and this kid in particular probably had plenty of other freaky skeletons in his closet, enough to fuck up a normal person pretty damn good – but it _bothered_ him.

And, as if to prove his point, as John watched Alex abruptly dropped his hands and got something steely about his demeanour. His mouth thinned down to a determined line, his eyes screwed shut, and he _visibly_ tucked it all away behind his mask. 

John couldn’t help but admire the determination that had to take.

There was resignation in the kid’s eyes when he opened them again, John watched carefully as he sat up a little. 

“Hey,” John said, soft and low, deciding it’d be better to get this over with.

Alex’s gaze snapped to him, and he stared for a second. His expression ran quickly from startled to frightened to angry, until he was eyeing John balefully in the dim light. The frightened part bothered John most of all, but he filed it away. It didn’t take a genius to know Alex was pissed about what John might have seen.

“You alright?” he asked calmly. 

Alex hesitated, then seemed to let go of being pissed in favour of resigned and sort of bitter. “Yeah,” he finally said, blunt and with almost no inflection in his voice.

“Nightmare?” The least John could do was make it clear that he _had_ seen, that there was no use Alex wondering _if_.

“Yeah.” More resignation, but less bitterness. Seemed like progress, because there was a slight hesitation before he admitted it but he didn’t seem too upset. 

John nodded calmly, and watched as the kid slowly eased himself upright, careful not to disturb Dean.

When Alex had his feet on the floor, John decided he could risk further conversation. He cast around for something else to say, something neutral, something that could lead to more or could be brushed off if Alex really didn’t want to talk about it.

“They seem to happen a lot, these nightmares.” As far as leading statement went, it wasn’t exactly subtle, but Alex didn’t seem like the type to appreciate beating around the bush anyway.

But an exhausted “Yeah” was all the response he got. It was more unsettling than John wanted it to be, both because of what it implied and because of the defeated tone of voice. 

John waited for something else, but Alex didn’t add anything. Unable to let it go like that, he asked quietly, “Do you have them every time you go to sleep?”

He’d been trying not to push, and Alex hadn’t seemed upset or unwilling to talk, but that question was apparently the trigger, the last straw. 

“Yes, okay?” he hissed, voice pitched low to keep from waking the others. “I have them all the time, and before you ask, no, they’re not always the same, some nights are worse than others, there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about them, and I’m _fine_.”

His voice had risen as he was speaking, but as soon as he snapped out the last word, he got a freaked out look and glanced back to check that he hadn’t woken Dean. 

He hadn’t. The kid turned back to John with a challenging expression, although some of the fight seemed to have gone out of him. 

John ignored the tirade and simply asked, “Do you think you can go back to sleep?”

Alex’s face tensed, then he sighed. “No, it’s not worth it.”

“You’ll have more?” John guessed.

Alex gave him a look, which answered the question pretty plainly. The kid stood up and went over to his duffle bag, started rummaging around for something.

“You seemed to sleep pretty well in Cleveland,” John said after a moment, more to see what reaction he’d get than to ask a specific question.

The kid paused, then continued rummaging. “I guess I felt safer in Cleveland,” he muttered.

It probably wasn’t a deliberate jab, but it still hit John somewhere deep. Alex didn’t feel safe with them? 

Rationally, John couldn’t blame him, because between his complicated relationship with Dean, and everything they’d brought down on him with the demon, it wouldn’t make for restful company. But it still stung. John wanted the kid to trust them a _little_ , enough to sleep safely, if not more. 

Nothing to be done, though, other than what they were already doing. He pushed the guilt away, after a moment, and looked up just in time to see Alex disappear into the bathroom with a pile of clothes. “I’m going to take a shower,” the kid tossed over his shoulder, then shut the door firmly.

John realised he’d been masterfully redirected. Alex might not have been conscious that he was doing it, but he’d successfully got John thinking about something else long enough to stop the awkward questions and let Alex make his escape. And now their conversation was over.

Since the kid was out of sight, John dropped his own head into his hands, and gave in to his worry for a moment. He heard the shower start up, but he wasn’t sure how long he sat there agonizing fruitlessly over Alex, Dean, the meet, the demon, _everything_ , before movement from the bed in front of him broke him out of his thoughts again. 

Dean was awake. And when John raised his head, he saw his son stare at the empty space in front of him with a betrayed look.

“What is it?” John asked. 

Dean startled, probably hadn’t known John was there, but then just shook his head. “Nothing. He said. “It’s nothing.”

“He’s just in the shower,” John said, indicating the door and the occupant behind it with a nod. 

“Yeah,” Dean said, although he didn’t seem to be agreeing.

“He had a nightmare,” John added, feeling practically no remorse about ratting Alex out to Dean. As far as he knew, it wasn’t really a secret anyway, and maybe Dean could help. “Seemed like a bad one, worse than the ones in the car.”

Dean tensed for a second, froze, then slumped back onto the bed. “Jesus.”

“You knew about those, right?”

“Of course I knew,” Dean replied bitterly, staring up at the ceiling like he could ask it for help. 

“He didn’t tell me what it was about,” John said, then added thoughtfully, “But I didn’t ask, either.”

“He probably won’t tell you even if you do ask.” Dean paused. “He told me he’s been dealing with them for a while now, so.”

There was a helpless, resigned note in Dean’s voice that John didn’t particularly like, but it seemed to match Alex’s own so there was probably nothing John could do.

The shower shut off. John watched every last bit of Dean’s attention zero in on the bathroom door for a long moment, listening to the soft sounds and shuffles of Alex in the bathroom. Then Dean turned away and sat up to get out of bed, rubbing one hand over his face. 

John got up and went back to the table and the maps. Finding a place to steal a car from was far, far less complicated and fraught than all of this other stuff. He knew which job he was better at, too.

The bathroom door eventually opened, and Alex came out, fully dressed and towelling his damp hair. He caught sight of Dean standing by the dresser and blurted out, “Hey, you’re awake.”

“Yeah,” Dean said shortly. He didn’t turn around.

Alex hesitated, then said, “Sorry if I woke you up.” It sounded like a question.

“You didn’t,” Dean replied, and _that_ sounded like an accusation. John frowned. He had no idea what was going on.

Alex ran one hand over the back of his neck, pressing down and wincing like he was trying to loosen a knot. “I’m sorry,” he finally said again, genuine and regretful.

Dean responded with a brusque, “It’s fine,” and stalked past Alex into the shower. Alex looked at the closed door for a second, then sighed. He abandoned his wet towel on the bed and joined John at the table with a faintly dispirited air.

John still had no idea what just happened, but he was absolutely not going to ask. 

“What time is it?” Alex said, after a moment or two spent messing with the laptop. John noticed his shower seemed to have refreshed him, at least, and he no longer seemed angry.

“About three. We’ve still got a while before the sun goes down.”

“We should get some food,” Alex suggested. “I know we ate before, but I’m starving,” he said, sounding faintly surprised.

John nodded. “We can do that. Look, Dean’s. I told him you had a nightmare.” He hadn’t been going to say anything, but it occurred to him that maybe this was his fault. He didn’t want it to get _worse_ , whatever it was.

But Alex just said dismissively, “That’s not what he’s pissed about.”

“Oh?” John wasn’t sure if he wanted to know, but if Alex wanted to tell him...

“Yeah,” Alex said, and it seemed final. Then he added, “Well, probably not. Is Sam still asleep?”

“Yeah,” John replied, grateful for the change of subject. “I was going to let you all sleep a while longer, but he’ll probably wake up soon as well.”

“Okay. Me and Dean can go get some food or something, we’ll bring some back for him.”

John hesitated.

“What?” Alex asked with narrowed eyes.

“Would you mind staying here? I’ll go with Dean.”

Alex opened his mouth to protest, then just rolled his eyes. “Yes, fine, I’ll stay.”

“Thanks.”

“You know I’m going out later anyway? You can’t make this meet without me there.” 

It wasn’t really a challenge, just a reminder, but it still took John a second to find words that’d be careful enough to use as an answer. “I just don’t want you going out until you have to,” he tried.

“Fine,” Alex agreed with a simple shrug, then focused on his laptop again. “They’ve sent me Wood’s incantation; I’m forwarding it now. Like I said, it might not work when the demon’s expecting it, but you guys should memorize it before we go out.”

John, surprised by the abrupt change of subject, nodded but didn’t reply with anything else. Alex didn’t add anything either, and the silence that fell was far more relaxed than John would have expected. Alex’s moods were... mercurial.

The shower shut off, and soon Dean emerged from the bathroom. He seemed calmer as well, and when John told him that Alex would stay in while the two of them went out, he relaxed even further. Despite that, he turned to Alex and asked, “You’re okay with that? With not going out?”

Alex looked up briefly and shrugged again. “It’s fine. I wanted to look over some stuff anyway,” he added, gesturing to the laptop.

Dean nodded, and when he turned away, John saw the relief on Alex’s face. From that, he worked out Alex was trying to apologise, or appease Dean for whatever had happened when he woke up. 

John held back an eye-roll by sheer force of will. God, they were complicated.

When Dean was ready, they headed out, leaving Alex at the table and Sam still snoring on the bed. “We’ll wake him up when we get back, I guess,” John muttered.

As soon as they left the room, John noticed just how weak the sunlight was getting. It was almost sundown. Tension started to creep through his muscles, as anticipation for the night and the meet ahead of them started to seep through him. 

The diner they’d eaten at earlier didn’t do take away, so they ordered from the burger joint a couple of places down. Dean didn’t say much while they waited, but he probably had about as much on his mind as John did. 

For his part, John could barely believe they were really here. They were going to get another weapon. 

It wasn’t that he hadn’t been thinking about it. He’d been obsessing over the idea since Alex first mentioned it as a possibility, before they’d known for sure another weapon even existed. But now. Now the sun was getting lower and lower as the afternoon wore on, and as soon as it set, it’d be time.

He might have the weapon in his hands before the end of the night. Hell, it could already be somewhere close by, somewhere in the city. 

He tamped down on the rush of impatience. It took a lot of effort, but he managed. When their food was ready, he took the bags silently and stalked out. Dean shadowed him, but John was barely aware. Determination was consuming him, he didn’t even want to wait long enough for them to eat. He didn’t care about the food, he wanted the weapon.

But he restrained himself. The sun wasn’t down yet, and they had to go at Alex’s pace, even if John suddenly thought he might die of frustration.

“Eat fast,” he said to Alex and a slow-moving Sam, who was finally awake. Well, mostly awake. “I want to get to the meet as soon as the sun starts to set,” John added.

Alex seemed unsurprised. “Okay. I didn’t get an exact time, so we might have to wait awhile, but it’s a bar. We can hang out without looking out of place,” he said, shrugging.

John nodded grimly, and out of the corner of his eye he caught Dean eyeing him warily. Sam just yawned.

They pulled the burgers out, and John kept a leash on his impatience. It was almost sundown. It’d happen soon enough.


	10. Vampires Will Never Hurt You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from a song by My Chemical Romance.

Before they left for the bar, Xander gave a short but serious speech about following his lead. He explained – again – that he didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, but they would need to do what he said, for their own safety and also that of the contact. One wrong move, and the Council could be out a resource that they really couldn’t spare. 

He’d also mentioned the possibility that someone could grow tentacles, and John had nodded and agreed not to kill anyone. Xander was a little sceptical about how well his agreement would hold up against the myriad of ways this job could go wrong, but he figured he’d just have to hope for the best. 

As they left the motel room, everyone’s tension seemed to get ramped up a few notches. John drove, no-one argued with him, it was all very businesslike.

Perversely, the whole thing made Xander want to goof off, to talk shit and just irritate the hell out of all of them. He wasn’t even sure why, because he was pretty damn tense about the meet too. He was exhausted, he’d had a nightmare that was about a six on the scale – worse than the one he’d had in the car, not as bad as the worst he’d ever had – and now he had to pull this whole thing off pretty much on his own. The urge to crack a bad joke about it all was almost _physical_.

He was still trying to remember the last time he’d wanted to use humour as a defence mechanism quite so badly, when they pulled up outside the bar.

Once inside, the air was a little stifling. It was a warm night, like Las Vegas was only pretending to do winter right now, and this particular bar didn’t seem to believe in proper ventilation. But Xander loosened his coat and leaned casually on the bar anyway. He and Dean were going to order beers and sit at a table; John and Sam were going to come in a few minutes later and hang out nearby. 

Pretending they weren’t together wasn’t really part of the usual plan – the contact apparently knew he was travelling with allies – but even if it was overkill, anything to make John feel like he was contributing. His frustration at not having anything to actually _do_ was almost tangible. 

Dean nudged him, apparently encouraging Xander to carry his own beer. Xander rolled his eyes but picked up the already-sweating glass and followed him. The bar had a nice fog of cigarette smoke, which was kind of comforting, and it was early enough in the evening that there were still free tables. They sat, and pretended to watch some kind of football game on the TV screen in the corner.

It wasn’t long before his attention started to wander. He glanced back, to find John and Sam had set up on one of the pool tables behind them. It was good to have someone on their six, he supposed, the blind spot had been bothering him. 

Xander scanned the crowd. It was still pretty early – just after knock-off time for people who actually had jobs – and the clientele was trickling in. He hadn’t been in a human bar like this for a while, and a sudden weariness threatened to overwhelm his nervous energy as he looked around at all these people who had no idea what was really going on in the world. 

It’d happened before. It was hard to relate, sometimes, to people who went to work and came home and watched TV and went to bars and that was it, that was their lives. Being in a crowd of them like this always just kind of... It didn’t sting, he didn’t really want what they had. But it was weird. 

It’d been different at the Bronze. Despite the wilful blindness and denial that ran rampant back in Sunnydale, the people there had always had an edge of awareness, some inkling about the reality of the situation that, even when they totally ignored it, subconsciously made them slightly less relaxed. And Cleveland was similar, or getting there.

Here, though... Here, every single person believed, utterly and completely, that they were at the top of the food chain. 

Xander sighed, and brought his attention back to reality. Just in time, too, because he looked over at Dean, and...dammit. Dean was eyeing a guy sitting on a barstool to the left of their table and Xander knew that look. That look meant Dean was mentally tallying the guy’s weight, muscle mass and likely weak spots. That look meant he was anticipating a bar fight. 

“Hey,” Xander hissed. “Don’t you dare.” And damn, that’d made him sound like a scandalised wife, which was kind of unfortunate. Mostly because, in other circumstances, he’d probably participate merrily in whatever beat-down Dean instigated as long as they got out before the glass started flying. 

Dean tried on an innocent face. “What? I wasn’t doing anything.”

Xander narrowed his eyes at him. “Were you about to?”

“...no,” Dean said, looking shifty.

Xander raised an eyebrow.

That was apparently all it took to get Dean to crack. “Look, when we were at the bar I heard him say he could take any fag in this place. I was thinking about proving him wrong, that’s all,” he said across the table, frowning.

And that was not the answer Xander had been expecting. For a moment he was too surprised to reply, and then he was tempted to let Dean at it so they could expend a little nervous energy. But then his brain recovered, and he said, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re a little busy.”

“I know,” Dean protested. “I was just _thinking_ about it.”

“As long as it stays thinking, and doesn’t become doing.” As soon as the words left his mouth, Xander grimaced at how maternal he sounded. Dean looked like he was about to laugh at him, too, so Xander rolled his eyes at him and resolutely stopped talking, turning his attention to their surroundings again. 

The bar got more crowded pretty quickly, and it got harder to see every person that came in. Xander grew even more certain the contact would be human, or human enough to pass, because this was absolutely not a demon bar. There was nothing here except very ordinary people; hell, _Xander_ was probably the most supernatural being in the whole place.

Overall, it made him pretty glad he hadn’t had to put too much effort into justifying demons who were also allies with John Winchester. That was a conversation he could happily put off for a long time, not least because trying to explain Willy’s Alibi Bar to someone who had never been there and experienced the smell for themselves was probably going to take a lot of work.

Suddenly, Xander caught a flash of something out of the corner of his eye. It pulled his attention away from the mass of humanity by the pool tables, over to the back door. He hadn’t been looking that way, but could have sworn he’d seen something...

There was a crowd of people by the dart board, and just as he looked over they moved and blocked his line of sight. He waited impatiently for them to shift again, but tried to stay casual. Keep the cover, he reminded himself, they were supposed to be relaxing in a bar. 

Finally, the woman moved, and dragged the guy with the baseball cap with her. Xander waited a second, then glanced over. 

Only to see dirty peroxide, black leather and a sneer. Xander froze. It wasn’t possible.

Spike met his eyes for a long second, and the world stopped. It wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be Spike. It couldn’t be not-Spike, either, though, because that was worse. Xander didn’t know what to do.

It wasn’t possible, everything in Xander’s brain said it wasn’t possible. Everything in every other part of his body was _terrified_ of what it could mean if it was, and therefore insisted that Xander make it not be.

Then Spike ducked out the door. Xander bolted from his seat to follow, ‘casual’ totally forgotten. He shoved through the crowd, ignoring Dean’s shout from behind him. Despite his denial, or maybe because of it, he _had_ to follow and find out the truth. 

When Xander slammed his way through the back door, the alley outside was empty. He stopped, breathing hard, and stared up and down, searching for a sign that he wasn’t hallucinating again.

But there was nothing. Dread crept in underneath the panic. Oh god, what if she was back? _What if she was back?_ His heart started pounding so hard it felt like it was trying to tear a hole in his chest.

Unwillingly but unable to stop himself, Xander went further into the darkness, away from the light in the doorway behind him. He heard Dean come out after him but ignored him when he called out, extending his senses out into the darkness instead. He knew he wouldn’t hear her coming, but if he heard something else, if there was something there, something _solid_...

Spike was dust, burned up with the Turok Han. But Xander still refused to believe that the other possibility was happening. 

_What if she was back? No, she wasn’t back. She couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible._

That feeling he’d had in the gas station bathroom, like he was about to drown in the fear and emptiness inside him, was just about to overwhelm him again when he heard the scrape of boots on the concrete behind him. 

Adrenalin flooded through him instead of emptiness, and all his senses flared to hyper-alert as the body-odour-and-old-blood smell of the Bringers filled his nostrils. He barely felt the touch on his shoulder, and he was already moving. 

He elbowed backwards, hard, catching his attacker in the ribs. Their arms came around him – trying to trap him, hold him in place – but he braced his feet and shoved backwards, throwing them off balance. That plus another elbow to the ribs somehow wasn’t quite enough to knock them down, but their arms were gone, dislodged from around him, and that was enough.

He went backwards with them, to keep them in range, and angled the next blow upwards, using his elbow again and bracing it with his other hand to give it more force. The blow connected with a sharp thud, catching his attacker across the side of the head. He’d been aiming for the jaw, they were shorter than he’d thought, but it didn’t matter. He twisted his body around, staying in their space, and used the momentum to swing his other fist, to follow the elbow with a hard hook to the face.

Spike backed away, stumbling a little as his head had snapped to one side when Xander’s blow landed on his cheekbone. When Xander chased him blindly, pulling his fist back to punch again, Spike lurched forwards, swooping in too close for punches and grappling with Xander, getting a grip on him until he was trapped. 

Xander struggled anyway, but Spike gripped his jaw and twisted his head back to an awkward angle that made it impossible for him to move without snapping his own spine. 

“Harris,” Spike was saying, again and again. “Harris. _Xander_. Would you cut it out? _Enough_. Stop fucking panicking, I’m not a goddamn ghost.”

Xander couldn’t stop himself from struggling against Spike’s hold, but then somehow the words registered. The smell was suddenly gone, and his stomach sank as he realised he’d been imagining it. Through the horror, he saw Spike for the first time, saw him, felt him, and realised that it was Spike and his blows had actually _landed_. 

Then, he realised what that _meant_.

It was _Spike_. Spike was back. She wasn’t. 

Xander took a deep breath and exhaled, letting go of that blind, fight-or-flight brain space. But before he could say anything, there was an ominous click as someone cocked a handgun, and Xander saw a glint of silver hovering to the right of Spike’s ear. 

Dean had only just stepped in, and he realised the whole fight must have happened much faster than it felt like.

“You need to let him go,” Dean said, sounding calm and very, very dangerous.

Spike snorted at the gun but capitulated, releasing Xander. Xander backed away, and then he couldn’t stop himself from staring because Spike looked _exactly_ the same. It was like a big piece of Sunnydale had been ripped out of his nightmares and planted down in front of him. It made him want to run screaming, but every muscle in his body was frozen.

“Alex, are you alright?” Dean asked, still dangerously calm but Xander could pick out the edge of anxiety in his voice. He’d stepped between Xander and Spike, still training the gun on Spike like it’d actually do something.

Xander couldn’t answer that question. He couldn’t stop staring. He finally got control over his brain again and said hoarsely, “You’re dead.”

Spike was watching Xander like Dean and his gun weren’t even there. His expression had been guarded, but Xander realised belatedly that Spike’d started to look vaguely _worried_ before Xander spoke, what the fuck?

As soon as the words left Xander’s mouth, though, Spike snorted, worry immediately hidden away under the cocky bravado Xander remembered so well. “Been dead since you met me, mate,” he said lightly. 

For some reason, the familiar tone gave Xander the full movement of his limbs again, and he moved out from behind Dean. “But she told us you burned,” he blurted out, still staring at Spike.

Spike’s expression shut down at the words, but Xander didn’t care. The longer Spike stood in front of him, the closer Xander got to the vividness of that last day, the piercing light, the horrifying sensation of the ground itself falling away behind them. He didn’t have room for anything else. He knew Dean was still beside him, too, knew he had to be freaked out by the conversation, but he couldn’t make himself care about that either. 

Some of the anguish must have shown his face, because he caught an answering flicker in Spike’s eyes, an acknowledgement of the raw wound that was everything that’d happened in Sunnydale.

The flicker was gone in a moment, but so was the bravado. Spike’s expression was blank when he said, “I did. They brought me back.” Xander could hear the strain in his voice at the effort it took to sound calm.

Then the words registered, and Xander’s mind reeled. “What? Who would do that?” Horrified curiosity made him ask, even though he knew he’d probably regret knowing the answer.

“Angel’s people,” Spike admitted, and the bitterness in his voice was probably justified. Xander tried to stop himself from flinching, but he didn’t think he was successful.

“Anyway, mate, that’s old news,” Spike said, pulling bravado back over his face again like a mask. Xander watched warily as he paced away across the alley a few steps.

“Who’re your friends?” Spike said, suddenly switched his gaze off Xander and onto Dean, then to John and Sam, who’d joined them at some point and were backing Dean up with a gun each. 

The reality of the situation came back to Xander in a rush, and he shoved enough of his horror away in favour of managing what he suddenly realised could become a very volatile situation. “None of your business,” he replied quickly, moving to keep himself between Spike and the Winchesters. Because yeah, Spike wasn’t the First, which was awesome, but he was still _Spike_ , which meant the less involved he was in Xander’s life – especially this clusterfuck of a road trip – the better. 

And fuck, he was going to be so, so lucky if everyone got out of this in one piece. 

“Bet I can guess,” Spike was saying, giving Dean a sly look.

“I don’t care,” Xander said, frowning. “What do you want, Spike?” Xander had successfully shoved all the memories away, temporarily at least, and now Spike needed to get to the point before John or Dean could reach crisis point and do something stupid.

And hell, it was a damn good question. What the fuck was Spike doing in Vegas, of all places, and more importantly, why was he tracking Xander down? And tonight, of all nights. Whatever the reason, it couldn’t be good. 

The question made Spike frown, irritated. “Come on, mate, be a good sport,” he grouched. “Back from the dead, here, don’t you want to posture a bit more? Threaten each other? Maybe go get a beer?” He sounded oddly hopeful.

“As if you’d take a threat from me seriously,” Xander quipped, on reflex. Then he added, with a frown, “Seriously, Spike, what are you doing here? How did you find me?” 

“Ways and means, mate,” Spike replied with a grin. “You sure you don’t want that drink?”

“Positive,” Xander said dryly. Despite their occasional camaraderie in Sunnydale, they weren’t friends. And since that was definitely still true, no matter how resurrected Spike was, Xander was a little more interested in _what the fuck was going on_.

Spike abandoned the offer with a shrug. “Suit yourself,” he said, unconcerned. “I’ll get to the point, then. You’re going to love this one, Harris. I’m here...” he drawled, pausing for suspense. “To offer you a job.”

Xander froze. His entire brain shut down, with the exception of one fairly large part of it solely dedicated to saying _What?_ at full volume. Repeatedly.

Those were the _last_ words he expected to come out of Spike’s mouth.

“What?” he managed, which, after several seconds of desperate flailing for words, seemed concise, to the point, and completely indicative of his total disbelief.

“Well, technically,” Spike said with a smug smile. “Angel is offering you a job.”

And _that_ , Xander realised after a few more seconds of mental flailing, was even worse.

 

***

 

Xander’s mind whirled so hard he felt like puking. His perspective shifted in a way that felt almost _physical_ , and the rest of him scrambled to balance again. Which, coupled with that way the seething morass of horror and nightmares that already lived in his brain was only barely contained again after Spike’s surprise appearance, was no easy task.

Somehow, though, he managed not to go into a total meltdown. He ruthlessly suppressed his confusion, less successfully suppressed no small amount of betrayed anger, and dragged his brain back online. 

_What the fuck is he thinking?_ echoed through his mind for a full second, before he managed to speak again.

“Angel,” he said flatly. “Angel is offering me a job.” He tried the phrase out, just for kicks, and it tasted fucking surreal.

“I can barely believe it either,” Spike agreed with a grin. “I tried to tell him you’d sooner work for Mosklock demons, but he wanted to offer anyway.”

“What’s a Muklock demon?” he heard Sam whisper behind him. 

“Mosklock,” Xander corrected automatically. “They’re...they’re... I’m sorry, my brain’s, like, misfiring. A job? _Seriously?_ ” he said angrily. 

Before Spike could reply, John suddenly stepped forwards a little and said, “Wait, just stop, okay? Let me get this straight. This is Spike, the vampire?”

Xander grimaced, but glanced at John. “Yeah. Can we talk about the whole vampire thing later?” he suggested, feeling the strain. “This here? Really not the time.” 

John looked like he wanted to protest, but Dean pulled him back and muttered something in his ear. And thank god for that, because Xander was well aware that the longer they stood there, the more likely it was that one of the Winchesters would get shirty and decide to test out just how bulletproof vampires were. Not that Xander cared too much about Spike getting shot, but it’d definitely... complicate things. 

“Oh, come on, it’s always the time for vampires,” Spike was saying, dragging Xander’s attention back to him. He looked far too amused by John, and Xander glared at him. “But going back to your earlier question, yes, a job, and yes, Angel,” Spike added, and Xander wanted to punch the smirk off his face so badly he could almost taste it. Hell, it might make him feel better. 

Then Spike cocked his head to one side and narrowed his eyes. His voice was oddly serious when he said, “I tried to tell them not to send me.”

“Why _did_ they send you?” Xander snapped, because of all the problems here, that wasn’t the smallest. With every passing second, it got harder to ignore the part of him that looked at Spike and wanted to run. Or just scream harder and harder. He couldn’t _believe_ they’d sent _Spike_. How the fuck could they do this to him?

Spike just shrugged. “Other people were busy. And between me and Peaches, I still figured you’d prefer to talk to me.” 

Xander didn’t honestly think that was true. His mental state was fucking precarious lately, and finding out that Spike was alive – undead, whatever – again, was a shove in the wrong direction that he really hadn’t _needed_. 

He suddenly remembered that no-one really knew. They all knew Spike had been involved and everything, but only a few people knew he still had nightmares about it. Only Faith knew about the cemetery. The only person who would have been careful of something like this was Giles, and Xander had deliberately not told him how bad it was in his brain at the moment. He’d probably assumed Xander would be able to cope.

Fuck. Great, he’d brought all this on himself. 

“I’d prefer neither of you,” Xander groaned, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck and still trying to suppress the nausea, the way he wanted to just curl in the corner and wait for the shaking to stop. He ignored the wounded look Spike gave him for what he’d said, and paced restlessly back and forth across the alley as he tried to think rationally. 

In the end, he couldn’t stop himself from repeating, “A job? Seriously? Angel? _You_?”

Because this whole day couldn’t get any worse. Road trip from hell, nightmares, awkward conversations, and now _this_. It was fucking ridiculous.

Spike just grinned. “Me. Percy had something to do with it as well.” Then he added, “Oh, and it gets better. They’ve sent you a gift.”

Better was a relative concept. Xander’s thought processes ground to a halt again. “They sent a gift,” he said flatly. 

“An in-cen-tive,” Spike drawled. “To sweeten the deal, something to entice you in. Apparently you get to keep it even if you don’t take the job.” 

Xander narrowed his eyes again, ignoring the patter. Spike seemed far too pleased about this gift for it to be a good thing. “I’m sorry, _if_ I don’t take the job?” he muttered, for lack of anything better to say.

Spike grinned knowingly, but didn’t say anything. After another moment to think fruitless thoughts about how jacked up all of this was, Xander rolled his eyes. “Okay, okay. Show me this gift.”

Spike turned to head off down the alley. 

“If it’s dead bodies or ninja assassins, I’m going to be very upset,” Xander warned. But he followed anyway. 

Because really, fuck it. The damage was done as far as Xander’s nightmares went, and if he tried he could ignore the crawling sensation under his skin long enough to get rid of Spike. All he could do was try to keep hold of himself until they had the weapon. And the sooner Spike did whatever he was about to do, gave Xander this fucking gift, or whatever, the sooner he’d leave. The sooner Xander could get on with forgetting this little meeting had ever happened.

One day very soon, his life was going to tip him over the edge into absolute insanity and probably homicide, he apparently didn’t have a choice about that. But until then, he had a job to do and he might as well make the most of the sanity he had left.

With that in mind, he followed the vampire down the alley.

Before he made it more than a few feet, though, Dean’s hand shot out to grasp his arm. “Alex, wait, what the fuck? Don’t go with him,” he said, disbelieving. “What the hell’s going on?”

Xander grimaced, and tried to make sure the edges of self-destructive resignation were tucked away. The last thing he wanted was for Dean to guess how badly Spike was affecting him. And then he had to think carefully about how to answer, anyway. He studied the three of them quickly, trying to assess the confusion level. Dean looked anxious. John looked disgruntled, and a bit like he was running out of patience. Sam just looked out of his depth.

Xander swallowed heavily and carefully shook his arm out of Dean’s grip. “Well, Spike’s. It’s. It’s complicated,” he said, and stopped. It was bad enough that the grey areas he’d been so reluctant to even have a conversation earlier had not only showed up, but were upsetting his mental state just by being corporeal and walking around. Now they expected him to _explain_ it?

Hesitating, he exhaled in frustration. “Basically it turns out Angel’s even crazier than he used to be, and he’s decided he wants to employ me. Spike is...humouring him,” he tried, summing up. He wasn't really satisfied with that, but at a loss how to explain better without going into a lot of detail he didn’t want to go into, and they didn't have the time for. Hopefully, they’d buy it.

“And what, you’re humouring him too?” Dean asked, disbelief on his face. Xander just shrugged.

“Can’t you tell him to get lost?” John said, almost too impatient to make it a question instead of an order. “We’re a little busy, here.”

Xander shot John an irritated look. “You guys can go back into the bar if you want.”

“We’re not splitting up,” Dean interjected.

“This will only take another minute,” Xander said, still trying to stay rational. He could feel Spike’s eyes on the back of his head, and searched for another reason, something they’d accept. “Look, if I don’t let Spike give me whatever this gift is and send a reply back to Angel now, they’ll just keep trying, keep turning up wherever I go. It’ll be like a bad penny, every time we stop somewhere. It’s better to just give him what he wants, deal with it now instead of later.” That sounded believable, he decided.

John seemed to move towards reluctant acceptance. “The contact, will they wait?” he asked unhappily. 

“They will. I swear, this won’t take long, and I haven’t forgotten what we’re here for,” Xander replied, and it was mostly the truth. Another short pause, to make sure none of them were going to try and stop him again, and he turned to follow Spike. 

Like he thought, Spike had been watching, waiting. He had a calculating look on his face, and raised a brow at Xander when he was looking his way. Xander just raised one back, a silent challenge that Spike didn’t bother to respond to. They headed down the alley towards the street at the other end, and the Winchesters followed, tense and uncertain.

Just before the alley mouth, Spike stopped and gestured to a large shape under tarp. It’d been hidden slightly by the dumpsters, which blocked the view of the bar’s back door. “Here it is, mate. Happy birthday.”

Xander had about two seconds to decide the gift was car-shaped before Spike pulled the tarp off dramatically. 

“What the fuck,” was all Xander got out before Dean made a strangled noise.

“Is that. Is that my car? Is that my fucking car?” he demanded angrily.

“Yeah, it is. Perfect gift for the jilted ex-boyfriend, don’t you think?” Spike said, waggling his eyebrows at Xander.

Xander stared at the car, shocked again, and not just because he had no clue how the fuck Spike had gotten hold of the Impala.

He hadn’t seen the car after the crash. From what he’d heard, it’d been in terrible shape. Beyond fixing. Destroyed. Now, though, it looked pristine. It looked. It looked exactly like it had the last time Xander’d seen it – the last time Dean had driven away from him in San Francisco.

“You. What.” Dean levelled an absolutely furious glare at Spike.

Spike smirked at him, then said to Xander, “Probably should have introduced us after all, mate. Saves awkwardness like this.”

“Don’t try to pin this on me,” Xander shot back, totally unsettled by the onrush of memories. The sheer glee Spike seemed to be taking in the situation wasn’t helping, either. He frowned. “What the fuck did you take Dean’s car for?”

“We wanted to get you something more personal than a fruit basket,” Spike said, familiar and mocking. Xander narrowed his eyes. 

Dean looked torn between furious and amazed, and also a little like he was going to explode. “But...but she was totalled?” he said, looking between John and the car, to Sam, to Spike. 

Spike snorted, but agreed anyway. “Yeah, she was in bad shape when we magicked her out of that junk yard, wherever the hell that was. But Peaches has resources these days,” he went on, a mix of smug and reassuring that made the hair on the back of Xander’s neck stand on end. “It wasn’t too hard to re-build her. Got to work with a few Hashlari spells, restored her to her former glory in no time.”

Dean ran one hand reverently over the hood of the car, then peered in the windows. “Jesus Christ,” he said, and Xander detected a hint of choked-up in his voice. Sam and John had been astonished into lowering their weapons, too, it was like a Christmas miracle.

“No Jesus,” Spike corrected. “Just a bit of magic.” Then he paused and casually stepped a little closer to Dean. He looked _friendly_ , and it made Xander narrow his eyes again. “The thing about the Hashlari is that they rebuild objects using something like DNA. Don’t need new parts, don’t need to paint and finish, just get as many of the bits as you can find, and the spell reconstructs the broken object so it’s exactly like it was before you fucked it up,” Spike explained, watching Dean closely.

Amazed, Dean popped the hood. “Holy shit. Holy shit, this is the same engine, the same parts. The manifold, the _carb_ , oh my god.” He ran his hands over the car parts like he couldn’t believe they were real. “It’s all exactly the same.”

“Down to the very molecules,” Spike promised. Then – and Xander knew he should have seen it coming – he added smugly, “Except for the part where all those molecules now belong to Xander.”

There was a second of shocked silence. 

“What?” Dean snapped, whipping out from under the hood and glaring at Spike. “Hey, you can’t just give him my car. It’s...it’s stolen fucking goods,” he spat, moving to stand between Spike and the car like he thought Spike was about to take it away from him.

Spike met Dean’s advance, getting in his face as he hissed, “You really think you can _stop_ me? After what you did, you’re lucky I’m not giving him your _spleen_.” His smugness had evaporated into sheer hatred, and Xander was shocked by the viciousness in his voice.

He intervened, physically shoving himself in between them. Spike was relatively immovable, but Xander didn’t hesitate to push Dean backwards away from the vampire. “Spike! Cut it the hell out,” he snapped, facing Spike down and glaring at him. “This is _not_ going to happen,” he added, his voice equal parts order and warning. “Both of you need to back down.”

After a tense moment – John and Sam had brought their weapons back up, so the miracle was definitely over – Xander sent a dark look over his shoulder. Dean hadn’t relented, but he did when Xander emphasised the glare. He looked wounded, but Xander ignored it and turned the full force of his insulted, disappointed gaze back on Spike. 

Who, he suddenly realised with stomach-dropping suddenness, he was a lot closer to Spike than he’d ever planned to get ever again. The proximity had bile churning in the back of his throat, but he swallowed hard and focused on his indignation instead. “For fuck’s sake, Spike,” he managed. “What the hell was Angel thinking? He really thought I’d want this car?”

Spike frowned darkly in response to the question. “It was the only thing of value Winchester here owned,” he sneered. “And it wasn’t Angel’s idea either, it was mine,” he added, shooting a mean smile in Dean’s general direction.

Xander stared for a moment, anger slightly derailed as he tried to figure out why Spike even gave a shit about his love life, let alone enough of one to threaten Dean and steal his prized possession. It was mystifying, and he raised two disbelieving eyebrows in the vampire’s direction.

Spike looked defiant for a moment, then frowned. “Well, it was a better idea before I knew he was here,” he said defensively.

Dean was fuming in his peripheral vision, but Xander kept staring at Spike, bewildered. _None of this made sense_ , and he couldn’t tell if it was real or some kind of misdirection. “You really, honestly didn’t know he’d be here?” he managed eventually. 

Spike narrowed his eyes a little but didn’t reply, so Xander went on. “Let me see if I’ve got this right,” he said, stepping back from Spike just slightly, to give himself some room to breathe. “Somehow, Angel – and you – got enough information to know that I left Cleveland, even though it only happened _two days ago_. Then you somehow tracked me across the country, or you found me here in Vegas even though I’ve been here for all of _seven hours_.”

Spike opened his mouth, but Xander held up a hand and went on before he could get a word out. “Not only that, but somehow you also found out where Dean’s car was, stole it, and completely repaired it. But now you’re trying to tell me you actually didn’t know who I was here with? You expect me to believe that?”

Spike opened his mouth, but this time he closed it himself, and frowned deeply. Which seemed to mean yes, he seriously hadn’t known. 

This prompted Xander to demand, “Who the fuck are you guys getting your information from?” 

“Obviously someone totally shit, now that you mention it,” Spike said, still frowning, eyeing the Impala thoughtfully. “I was handling the gift, the rest of it was Percy’s show. I didn’t know much about the details.” 

Xander laughed raggedly and stepped back a little further in self-defence. _Percy_. “Fucking Christ, Spike,” he said, because all of this was ridiculous beyond words.

Spike shrugged, frown still on his face. “Buggered if I know, mate.” But Spike – his grudge against Dean, his surreal protective hatred, protective of _Xander_ – had been successfully diffused, so Xander counted it as a win.

Then, of course, Dean said, “Excuse me. Can we get back to the car? What the fuck.” He’d been glaring at both of them, and was obviously not even trying to control his rage. “

“Dean, relax,” Xander said tiredly. “I’m not going to keep the car.”

Suspicion and disbelief were etched across Dean’s features. “Yeah?” he said.

“Yeah,” Xander snapped. “Remember that whole thing where I’m not actually an asshole?” He took one more second to glare at Dean, then gestured at Spike. “Keys,” he demanded.

Spike dug in a pocket and tossed the keys to Xander. Xander handed them to Dean, not bothering to hide the angry look on his face.

“Sorry,” Dean stuttered. 

“You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve,” Spike cut in, glaring at Dean with something triumphant and vindictive in his eyes, but Xander refused to let him get started. 

“Shut up, Spike, it’s none of your business,” he said, shifting his glare to the vampire.

Spike briefly looked shocked, then wounded again. When Xander kept glaring, though, he threw his hands up in the air. “Fine. Fucking moron.”

“This coming from you?” Xander said pointedly, because Spike _of all people_ was in absolutely no position to give him shit about dysfunctional relationships. 

Spike paused to think about that, then conceded with a commiserating “Yeah.”

Without taking his glare off Spike, Xander said, “Dean, check the car over? Make sure it’ll run and everything.”

“Fuck you, mate, it’ll run,” Spike protested mildly, and Xander could tell he’d once again successfully defused Spike’s bizarre protectiveness. Dean obediently retreated to the car, and Xander tried not to feel a twinge of regret for his probably hurt feelings.

John had been surprisingly patient so far, but now he said, “Look, I don’t want to interrupt or anything, but are we done here? We’ve got somewhere to be.” It sounded like he was having trouble unclenching his jaw, like he wanted to bash them all over the head just so he could go back to the bar and finish what they’d started. And Xander had to admit he’d been surprisingly restrained, given who – _what_ – Spike was.

“Oh, somewhere to be, well,” Spike said, all mocking and fake concern. He crossed to the other side of the alley and hoisted himself up to sit on a stack of milk crates. “Don’t worry, I won’t keep you. Xander’s going to have one smoke with me and then I’ll leave you assholes to it.”

Xander raised his eyebrows, but he followed Spike and took the offered cigarette. He glanced at John, who looked ready to swallow his tongue in frustration, but Xander didn’t really care. John would just have to wait.

“So, mate, what do you think? Want to come work with me in LA? I know Angel’d be there, but it wouldn’t be all bad.”

Xander blinked. “Seriously? You’re...seriously?” then winced, because he sounded like a broken record. He needed a new word to express his complete disbelief.

“What? You’d make me go back to Percy and Peaches with no answer?” Spike chided him lightly, apparently back to the bizarre friendliness he seemed to feel for Xander these days.

Xander just stared back at him, a thousand words on the tip of his tongue, and eventually he managed an incoherent sound of general confusion and dismay.

“You know, of all the things I thought would one day make you speechless...” Spike tutted. 

Xander glared witheringly at him. “Please. Like you ever thought _Angel_ would offer _me_ a _job_.”

Spike snorted. “True. So, shall I tell him no?”

“ _Yes_ , you can tell him no. Jesus Christ,” Xander replied, thinking that there were a few other things he’d like to say to Angel if he ever managed to get over the shock of this whole situation. He had a few things to say to Spike, too, but couldn’t because of who was listening.

Spike grinned. “I’ll tell him you said he could go shove his head up his ass,” he suggested.

“Sounds good,” Xander agreed, his voice still edged with incredulity. 

They watched the Winchesters milling around the car for another few moments. Then Xander realised his cigarette was almost done, and also realised that he wished he could stall, wished he could stay for a while. What, he wanted to spend more time with _Spike_ now?

He was so fucked up, he thought morosely.

Then Spike said, out of the blue, “It wasn’t just about your fucking ex, you know.” He’d stood, like he was getting ready to leave.

“What wasn’t?” Xander asked, even though he suspected he didn’t really want to know.

“The car. I didn’t pick that as the gift just to piss him off.”

“Okay,” he said slowly, tension suddenly twisting sharply across his shoulders. “Why did you pick it, then?”

Spike looked at him, and Xander had two seconds to realise Spike looked _sad_ before he was sliding two fingers across Xander’s left wrist, pushing his sleeve up, touching the barely-there scar on his forearm.

Xander threw himself back to get away from the touch, adrenalin spiking through his body, heart racing. Suddenly he was blind to anything other than the sight of Spike’s face snarling above him. He could feel the teeth in his arm again, feel all the blood and life draining out of him while she held his mouth closed so he couldn’t scream.

Then he was looking up at Spike from six feet away, on his ass on the ground without fully knowing how he got there. The Winchesters were arrayed around him like a defensive line, and Dean had his gun in Spike’s face again. Spike was looking past it, though, past Dean, right at Xander.

It took Xander a minute to realise what had happened, to remember what he was really doing in the alley with Spike and what the steps were. When he remembered, rage overtook him. 

“Fuck you, Spike,” he snarled. His hands were shaking, his whole fucking body was shaking. He wanted to throw up, and that hadn’t been fucking _necessary_. “Fuck you, you motherfucking _bastard_.”

Spike had the gall to look shocked by Xander’s reaction, but then a flicker of something crossed his face, and if Xander didn’t know better, he would have thought it was grief. “I had to apologise somehow,” he said, and the words sounded like a lie.

Bile rose in Xander’s throat again. “You call that an _apology_?” he sneered, hatred filling him. He pushed himself up of the wet alley floor, ignoring that hands that tried to help him to his feet. The effort of keeping up the pretence was too much, suddenly, and fuck the job, he wanted to spend the next few hours beating Spike to a pulp. Spike would probably let him, Xander could use the soul’s guilt as leverage

Before he could suggest it, Spike was backing away. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, face so shuttered this time that his features looked carved in stone. “Watch your back, too, there’s pigeons about, they’ll shit all over the car,” he advised. Then he turned on his heel and disappeared around the corner onto the street without another word.

“Motherfucker,” Xander hissed out, furious beyond words.


	11. Alligator Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from a song by Bring Me The Horizon.

“Alex, what the fuck was that?”

It was Dean. Xander clenched his fists and stared blindly down the alley after Spike, trying to keep his stomach under control, slow his breathing, calm the sudden onset of shaking in his limbs. Jesus Christ, he thought. Fucking _Spike_.

He took a deep breath and held it, raising one hand to try and wipe the horror from his eyes. He had a job to do, he reminded himself. There was too much going on, too much he had to think about. And they were already running out of time. He had to get his head back in the game. The complete mental breakdown he so desperately wanted to have would have to wait.

Remembering the job helped; Xander shoved the panic and horror down, and it was barely contained but he could hold it for a while. He could do this, he told himself. 

He turned back to the others and looked at Dean, who looked torn between murder and freaking the hell out. Something else they had in common, then. But if Xander didn’t get to freak out, Dean couldn’t either. 

“That was fucked up, is what that was.” The iron grip he had on himself helped, made it easier to pretend like nothing had happened, to shove it all further down inside him.

Dean was still holding the gun, still glaring down the alley. When he looked over, John and Sam were just watching, baffled. 

“Okay, so. So we’re going to pretend that didn’t just happen,” Xander said. And he meant it, but he was also stalling, trying to buy enough time to get his brain back on track. What next? What was the next step? 

Then he remembered. Pigeons. _Fuck_. A pen, he needed a pen. Methodically, he searched the pockets of his coat. He kept up the calm-and-in-control face, though, no use panicking. He could fake it until it was true.

“Pretend it didn’t happen?” Dean was saying, sounding horrified. He said something else, something about what Spike had done to freak Xander out like that, some good guy he’d turned out to be, but Xander was too busy scribbling on a receipt, trying to get the scruffy old ballpoint he’d found to actually work. 

Dean had paused, and then Sam asked doubtfully, “Is everything alright?” 

“It’s fine,” Xander muttered. The pen was working, he could do this, they’d all understand in a minute. 

“What are you doing?” Sam asked, baffled. Xander ignored him, kept scrawling on the paper. Hopefully they’d stay quiet until he could finish, hopefully they wouldn’t say the wrong thing before he could let them know.

Of course, hopefully once he did let them know, they’d be able to improvise. He knew Dean could, but he was taking the others on faith.

Finally, _finally_ , he finished the note. He shoved it hastily at Dean, unable to keep the intent look off his face.

Dean read it quickly, and stared at Xander. “Holy...” he exhaled, but he stopped at Xander’s sharply raised hand and fierce expression. “Uh, I just meant it’s very...”

“I know. Spike tends to have that effect on people.” Xander covered. He watched carefully, long enough to see Dean pass the note to John, then turned back to the car, talking mindlessly as he went. “Anyway, his and Angel’s craziness aside, I think his visit calls for a change of plans.”

He could practically _feel_ John’s eyes snap from the note to the back of his head. “What? What kind of change?”

“Because I assume we’re not going to keep the van now that we’ve got the Impala, and I want to move all our stuff,” Xander said calmly. He looked back. John was glancing between Xander and the note, like if he read it enough times, he could predict what was about to happen or something.

_Pigeons means the car is bugged, someone might be watching, and we’re definitely gonna be followed. Act natural. I can get us out of this._

Xander held his breath, waiting. What happened next hinged on their reactions. If they blew it, everything would get that much harder pretty damn fast. 

But, thankfully, this was not John Winchester’s first rodeo. “What about the job, though? We need to make that meet.” There was just enough protest in his voice to be totally and completely believable, and something in Xander relaxed.

“The contact’ll wait, trust me.”

For a moment, John looked like he wanted to argue, like he’d forgotten what the subtext of their conversation was. But a flash of anxiety crossed his face, he subtly checked his peripheral vision, then said, “As long as you’re sure.”

“Positive,” Xander said firmly. “Besides, we might need to get out of town quickly afterwards, and the sooner we ditch that van, the better.” John nodded, and Xander turned to raise his eyebrows at Dean, who offered him a grim smile in return.

Xander didn’t have the time or the brain space to worry about how this violation of the Impala would be affecting Dean. Or Sam, who was looking between the three of them like they were all nuts. 

And as soon as the thought crossed Xander’s mind, though, Sam opened his mouth to speak. Luckily, John saw the alarmed look on Xander’s face and shoved the note in Sam’s direction. Sam read it, and his eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets.

“I can’t believe Angel offered you a job,” Dean said, covering the weird silence. “You two have always hated each other.” He sounded so realistic that Xander almost wanted to congratulate him, except it would have been totally counterproductive.

“I know, I can’t believe it either. I blame LA, he’s been living there far too long. It’s messed up his grip on reality. Well, you know, messed it up _more_. Drive us to the van?” he said, gesturing to the car.

Dean grinned, briefly, then got another grim look on his face when he remembered his baby was bugged. “Of course. Can’t believe I get to drive my car again. This is freakin’ amazing.” The casual tone of voice contrasted with the reluctant look on his face and the tight line of his shoulders. 

They got in the car – Xander joined Dean in the front seat, and he tried really hard to keep from tapping his fingers, twitching, twisting to look behind them – and Dean drove them out of the alley and down the block to where they’d parked the van. 

“Make sure to get everything,” Xander advised, when they started shifting gear from the trunk of the van to the trunk of the Impala. “We’re not coming back.”He kept looking over his shoulder, checking up and down the street, looking for something, anything, any sign at all. 

John directed the move, shifting duffels around like he was playing Tetris. Xander noticed that they didn’t open the trunk’s secret compartment, even though whoever had rebuilt the car obviously knew about it. They acted like it was still a secret, just in case it was.

Xander turned away and started tracking the traffic. He still felt nauseous, the muscles in his back was tight with anxiety, and all his internal organs were twisting together, but thank god they were on a job. Thank god he had the distraction, because it would have been so much worse without.

Spike. _How the fuck could they not have warned him? How the fuck could Spike_ do _that to him?_

But he shoved that thought away, it wasn’t going to help him right now. He had to focus. 

When the final bag had been hefted into the backseat, he pulled out his phone. He fiddled with it until it made a beeping sound, then pretended to read the non-existent text message. “Hey, I just got a message from Giles. You know that thing out in Barstow?”

Dean looked up. “What about it?” Once again, he sounded totally casual, even though he had no idea what Xander was talking about.

“It’s going to go off the market. Tonight.”

John and Dean exchanged a look. “And?”

“And I want to go get it. Now. Before we meet with the contact.”

John glared at him, and Xander glared back, determined. They had limited time, they had to fix the car, and John fucking Winchester was just going to have to go with it.

“Look, the Impala goes faster than the van, we can make it there and back before daylight,” he said, trying to make it sound convincing. “The window we have with the contact extends until sunrise, or we can go to the bar again tomorrow,” he added.

John looked physically ill, shocked at the idea of waiting that long to get the weapon. He was clearly about to say something, or maybe just implode with rage, but Xander raised one eyebrow and flicked his eyes to the car, silently asking whether John remembered what the fuck was written on the note. 

John glowered, then gritted out, “Are you sure it’s necessary? I don’t like deviating so much from our original plan.”

“It’s necessary. Trust me,” and Xander felt like he’d said that phrase a million times already. “The contact doesn’t matter, we can take as long as we want. They’re still going be there,” he said pointedly. They’d had a whole conversation about protecting Council sources, after all, surely John hadn’t totally forgotten.

John got a look like he wanted to shoot someone, but apparently he’d gotten the message, even if he didn’t like it. He got in the back seat of the car without another word and slammed the door hard enough to rock the Impala on its wheels. But at least he was in the car, Xander decided. 

Sam climbed back in as well, much more quietly.

Xander exhaled, then stopped Dean as he headed for the driver’s side. “Wait, I’ll drive.”

Dean was, of course, reluctant. “Are you sure? Cause I can—“

“Dean, give me the keys,” Xander interrupted, reflexively looking over his shoulder at the traffic. Fuck, they were wasting time. They had to get out of here.

His visible paranoia apparently convinced Dean, and he gave up the keys without further resistance. They got in, and Xander took a deep breath as he started the engine. He peeled out without waiting for bullshit like seatbelts and merged into the Vegas traffic.

He kept one eye on the rear view mirror as they sped through the city but couldn’t see anyone following. That didn’t mean they weren’t out there, though, it just meant their surveillance was good enough that they didn’t need a physical tail. Shit.

The edges of the folded paper Spike had shoved into his sleeve kept scraping against the scar on his arm, and it killed him that he couldn’t pull it out. Soon, he promised himself. Soon he could get it the hell away from his arm.

Soon he could fall apart. Not now. 

“So,” John said, into the awkward silence that was filling the car. “Spike. What’s the story?”

Like Xander really needed another thing making him tense. “Story?” he said, but realised playing dumb probably wouldn’t work. “There is no story with Spike,” he said. “He worked with us on the hellmouth for a while, unwillingly in the beginning. Then, last year, when the place went down in flames, Spike went with it.”

He prayed that would be enough, that John would stop. No such luck. 

“What did he do to you?” 

Xander focused on the darkness in John’s voice, on the anger he thought he could hear. He distracted himself with that, with wondering why John even gave a shit, instead of thinking about what the honest answer to John’s question would have to be. His grip on his sanity was shaky enough without letting his brain go there. 

“I don’t want to talk about that right now,” he managed, after a moment of careful breathing and gripping the steering wheel. His vision had narrowed until he could only see the road in front of him.

John didn’t ask again. As a reward, Xander didn’t get angry with him for being stupid enough to ask such an invasive fucking question in the first place.

Instead, he kept driving, and by sheer force of will he managed to keep his mind ruthlessly on the job. Finally, they reached the street he was looking for. He took the turn. “Hey, I’m just going to pick up something else for Giles, okay?” he said. It wasn’t really a question, because he didn’t really give a shit whether they thought was okay or not. 

Two more sharp turns, two more blocks of random suburbia, and he slowed enough to pull into the parking lot behind a neighbourhood market. Behind it, on the other side of the lot, was a cinder-block building with a rusty-looking roller door, inconspicuous, anonymous, and exactly what he’d been looking for. 

He idled the car in the empty lot for a moment, but no-one pulled in after them. No-one even passed on the road behind them like they’d been following. He knew they were being tracked anyway, but there still didn’t seem to be any actual tails yet. There would be, but it was one more thing he was trying not to think too hard about.

He eased the car a little closer to the roller door, and said to Dean, “Do you mind opening up?” 

Dean gave him a quizzical look, but got out and jogged over to the door. It didn’t have a lock, and it hauled up surprisingly quietly considering how old and rusty it looked. Xander drove into the workshop, and Dean hauled the door back down behind them without asking. 

They rolled to a stop. “Where—“ John began, but Xander interrupted. 

“I’ve just got to get something for Giles, I told you.” He held a finger up to his lips and glared at John. “Just hang on, I need to check something.”

Steeling himself, he reached into his sleeve and _finally_ pulled out the note Spike had planted there. He flipped on the car’s light so he could read it.

It didn’t tell him anything unexpected, except that Wesley’s handwriting was chicken scratch. Giles’ was the same sometimes, and Xander wondered why they didn’t teach Watchers the importance of good penmanship.

When he couldn’t stall anymore, he shoved the note in his pocket and pulled out his pen again. He was out of receipts, so he checked the glove box. For some reason there was a whole notebook in there, and he grabbed it to scribble on. “Gotta leave a note for the guys who work here, then we can pack up the stuff. Can you guys move some of the bags over, make a space for Giles’ gear?”

He wrote fast, then handed John and Sam the pad of paper. 

_Get everything out of the car. Leave all doors open, including the hood, the trunk, and the extra compartment in back._

He left them with those instructions and got out. 

“What—“ Dean said, as soon as Xander was in sight. Xander held up a hand to stop him, then pointed to John and Sam, who were gesticulating silently at each other over the notebook. “Can you get the lights? Find the light switch?” he said to Dean.

“Sure.” Dean looked confused, but still seemed willing to go with it, thank god.

Xander looked around, then spotted the faintly-glowing markings on the edge of the big steel cabinet in the corner. He went over and peered at the latch, trying to work out how to open it without pulling the whole thing over on top of him. It was filthy – everything in there was filthy, the workshop used to be a mechanics but hadn’t been used in years – but Xander didn’t care. The cabinet had the materials he needed, the workshop had four walls, few windows and a spare patch of floor, so a bit of filth didn’t exactly matter.

The fluorescent lights started flickering on, one by one, and with the light Xander finally figured the latch out and got the damn cabinet open. The upper shelves still held bottles of oil or bleach or whatever the hell people used to use to fix cars, but the bag of salt was there on the bottom shelf, right where it was supposed to be.

“Man, where is Giles’ stuff? I’m sure they’ve left it around here somewhere,” he complained as he hefted the bag out. The others were almost done emptying the car.

Xander carried the salt over, and silently directed John to move their duffels and stuff a little further back. Then, pulling out a knife, Xander made a careful incision in the top of the bag of salt and began to pour.

When the car was completely encircled, he took the half-empty salt bag back to the cabinet, dropping it by the door, and leaned in to fish a bundle of dried herbs out of the pile that was behind the bottles on the upper shelf. 

He went back to the car. “Anything else you need us to do?” Dean asked, eyeing the herbs nervously.

“Look around for Giles’ gear? Can’t believe I can’t find it,” Xander said, but he shook his head at the same time. He gestured for Dean to step back, for him to stand with John and Sam and wait.

Then he turned back to the car, took a deep breath and stepped into the circle. 

He pulled a lighter from his pants pocket, and lit the herbs. White smoke poured from them, and he held the bundle out to the right and slightly downwards, so the smoke rose cleanly. He pocketed the lighter, and stretched his arm out in front of him and opened his hand so his palm faced towards the car. 

As soon as he started to speak, he could feel magic thickening the atmosphere, thrumming through the stale air of the workshop.

The chant was new, but had to be spoken in Old Sumarian – older than the usual ancient stuff, even – and the syllables twisted in sharp and unexpected ways. Xander could never remember which words meant what, exactly, but it didn’t matter. The forces he was appealing to for help in his search would still respond.

As the power built in the room, the car started to shudder. It rocked from side to side, reacting to the pull of power from Xander’s outstretched hand. 

It took several minutes, but finally something dislodged from inside the engine and flew across the room, landing at his feet. Something else pulled away from the underside of the rear bumper; a third object from the front left wheel well. A wire, coiling like a snake, tore itself out of the upholstery in the back seat and whipped through the air towards them. Then, with one final shudder, the cigarette lighter ripped itself out of the dashboard, housing and all, trailing more wires as it zoomed after the other bugs and assorted electronic tracking devices that had been planted in the car.

“Holy shit,” Dean breathed. Xander gave him a sharp glance to stop him from talking again, though, because they weren’t finished.

He stepped over the listening devices clustered at his feet and walked around the side of the car. He laid the still-burning herbs on the roof, as close to the centre as possible. 

A new chant, and the tracking sigils Angel’s mage had painted on the car grew visible, pale and eerie even under the fluorescent lights. 

Xander kept saying the words as he paced carefully back around to stand in front of the car. The raised front hood unfortunately blocked the herbs from his line of sight, but it didn’t matter. He could speak to the smoke without having to see it. 

He kept talking, reciting the sharp, familiar words and waiting for the change. Finally, as he approached the climax of the chant, he felt the usual resistance, as the spell written in the sigils fought against the ancient power he’d called on. 

He didn’t relent. The power surged as the spell fought harder, as he concentrated all his will on breaking the sigils. And finally, it worked.

The sigils melted, visibly liquefying and sliding off the side of the car. As the power faded out of them, they disappeared.

Xander was moving before the smoke cleared. He left the circle, heading for the cabinet again and the lead-lined bag that had been next to the salt. He brought it back, quickly picked up all the listening and tracking devices and tossed them in. 

Finally no-one was listening. But there still wasn’t time to relax. “Pack the car. Hurry.”

The Winchesters were standing there, staring, obviously totally shocked by what he’d just done. “Pack the car,” he repeated urgently, and it seemed to snap them out of it, to make it clear that they weren’t safe yet. 

John and Sam headed straight for the pile of bags. Dean gave Xander a searching look as he passed, but he was reeling too much in the aftermath of the spell to manage much more than a weakly apologetic half-smile in return. 

He couldn’t let exhaustion slow him down, though. With shaking hands, he carefully closed the hood of the car, then eased around the open car doors. He shoved the bag of electronics under the driver’s seat, easy reach so he could throw them out the window once they were on the move, and then he reached across the roof to get the burnt-down bundle of herbs. 

They’d been extinguished when the spell finished, and had gone stone-cold unnaturally quickly. Leaning into the car, he tossed them onto the ledge behind the back seat, where they’d be out of the way. He’d throw them out eventually too, but it was better to keep them in the car for a while after the spell was done, sort of like a clamp holding two pieces of something together until the superglue was totally dry. 

Then Xander pulled out his lighter again, and Spike’s note. He watched flames curl around the edges of the thin paper; it burned fast, but that was kind of the point. The paper was non-toxic, too, so it could be swallowed easily in an emergency. 

He didn’t think about sharp edges scratching against his arm. He couldn’t. He had to finish the job first.

Once that was done, Xander headed to the front of the shop, wiping grime off one of the few tiny windows in the place so he could peer out. Nothing in the lot, nothing on the street outside. They couldn’t be far away, though; they would have seen their spells blink out, noticed the dead air from the transmitters. 

Anxiously, he checked the progress the others were making. Almost done, even though Dean was standing there watching. 

“Dean, if you’re not going to do anything, get in the car. We need to get out of here,” Xander said impatiently. 

Dean flinched, surprised. He stared at Xander, eyes wide, and Xander had a sudden moment of panic. He’d never done magic in front of Dean before, had he just ruined everything? 

But the startled look vanished quickly, replaced by the concerned one Xander was seeing so often lately he’d almost forgotten it wasn’t always on Dean’s face. It still looked a little like he was trying to process too many things at once, but as much as Xander wished they had time to talk about it or deal with it, or do whatever would make Dean stop making any kind of face at him, they didn’t. Every second mattered, and that conversation could wait. 

“Get in the car,” he insisted, slightly more gentle this time, and it seemed to work. Dean got in the front passenger seat without a word, just as John and Sam shoved the last bag in. 

“Are we going back to the meet?” John asked, finally done with the bags and miraculously sliding into the back seat without comment. 

“No. Sam, could you get the roller door?” Xander asked. He climbed in and slammed his door, impatient to start the engine.

“Why not?” John demanded. “Wasn’t that whole performance, that spell you just did, or whatever the fuck just happened, supposed to stop us from being followed?” 

Xander didn’t bother to answer, though, just revved the engine and eased them backwards, reversing the car out of the shop. He stopped long enough for Sam pull the door down and jump back in the car, then turned in the lot so they could get back out onto the street. As they took off down the road, he checked the mirrors compulsively, expecting to see attackers closing in on them at any second.

They were safe from surveillance, but not from the rest. All the questions could wait.

At least, that was how he wanted it. John had other ideas. “Hey, answer me,” he demanded. “Tell me what the hell is going on.”

“Just explain it,” Dean said, voice caught halfway between placating and suspicious. “What happened just now? What did you do? And where are we going?” John started to add something else, Sam interrupted him before he could get it out, and Xander cracked.

“Okay, _okay_ ,” he snapped, thankfully silencing them all. “Yes, I just removed all the tracking devices on the car, including the magical ones. Speaking of, can you dump these out the window when we get a few more blocks closer to the Strip? Keep the bag, just make sure you toss everything out,” he said, yanking the bag out from under his feet and shoving it towards Dean. Dean took it without comment, and Xander took a deep breath.

“Now that we’ve dropped off their radars, though, they’re going to come after us in person,” he explained, trying to be calm. “They weren’t following us before because they had surveillance, but now that the surveillance is gone, we’re gonna have an actual tail to ditch.” 

He paused, then added pointedly, “So, no, we can’t go back to the contact yet.”

Blessed silence for a moment, as they digested that.

“Who’s ‘they’?” Sam asked.

Xander’s mouth snapped shut. He didn’t want to answer that question yet, he felt too superstitious, like as soon as he talked about them, they’d appear.

“Okay,” Dean said, and Xander could tell his eyes were trained on Xander’s face. “You can’t tell us anything about what’s coming? About _why_ they’re coming? Are they after the contact, or is this about Angel?”

Xander twitched, frowned, felt hunted. “I’m not even sure who it’ll be, exactly. Or what.” He pretended he hadn’t heard the other questions.

“So after we evade them, we can go back? What about the weapon?” John said, and Xander abruptly wanted to lean his head down on the steering wheel and sob because _sweet holy monkeys_ , the man _never gave up_.

“How many times do I have to tell you the weapon will wait?” The strain was clear in his voice, but John didn’t seem to give a shit.

“One more time, I guess,” John snapped. “Wait _how long_? Was all that shit about going back to Barstow just part of the cover? That had better not be where we’re really headed.”

The unspoken ‘or else’ on the end of John’s order was the last straw. Frustrated anger surged up inside Xander, and John was frankly lucky Xander couldn’t punch him and drive the car at the same time.

“The weapon will wait as long as I say it’s gonna wait,” he snapped. “Or have you forgotten again that this is _my job_? It’s my contact, my weapon, and my goddamn lead that _you agreed to follow_!” He glared fiercely into the rear view, in John’s general direction since he couldn’t actually see him.

John didn’t answer, but Xander could almost feel him biting his tongue, feel him fuming with impatience. 

“I am doing what we _need_ to do, do you understand?” he added, slightly less stridently but still pointed enough that John would probably get the idea. After a moment of strained, frustrated silence, he checked the rear view again. Street lights illuminated a grim expression on the man’s face that Xander was going to be petty and call a sulk. 

Jesus. 

After a few moments of his own fuming, though, he refocused his attention away from John Winchester’s temper and back to the job. He didn’t have the energy for this shit, he had to concentrate.

One block, two blocks, three blocks, and the lights were getting brighter. They were heading back into town, so there was more traffic on the roads, and Xander couldn’t stop his gaze from flicking to the side mirrors and the rear view. He settled a little lower in the driver’s seat and accelerated some more, trying to get closer to the Strip as quickly as possible. 

Then he checked the rear view again, and sure enough, there they were. 

His stomach clenched, and his adrenalin amped up a notch. But even as tension flooded his body, now that he knew for sure that they were being tailed he felt calmer in a weird way. The waiting and anticipation was over, the end was in sight – because this would end, one way or another – and all he had to do – all he _could_ do – was get to the exit.

Which he hadn’t told them about. Fuck. The Winchesters weren’t going to like the exit at all.

But, he decided meanly, they’d just have to get over it. He was in no mood to explain it to them, and besides, he needed to focus on driving the car.

Xander set his jaw, braced his hands on the wheel and said, “I don’t mean to alarm anybody, but I think we’re being followed.”

This part was not going to be fun.

 

***

Sam had watched the argument between Alex and his father with wide eyes, because goddamnit, John Winchester had a one track mind. It was pretty clear that the obsession he’d spent their entire lives living with was riding close to the surface, and it’d decided Alex was the only thing standing in its way.

Now that they were actually being tailed, though, John was silent, on edge and muttering curse words. He didn’t look behind them, though, just stared at the back of the seat in front of him even as every muscle in his body tensed. Sam matched him for a while, trying to act relaxed so they didn’t tip off their pursuers that they _knew_ they were being pursued. 

Then Sam slouched a bit, trying to lean over a little to get a look in Dean’s side mirror. He got a decent view of the road behind them, and he wasn’t sure what he was looking for yet, but if it was there, maybe he’d get a glimpse. 

“You can turn around if you want, I don’t give a shit if they know we know, this time,” Alex said suddenly. Christ, the guy had eyes in the back of his head or something. But Sam didn’t ask questions, just turned his head the other way so he could crane it over the back of the seat. He stayed slouched – no use being a bigger target than necessary.

He glanced at John, and noticed his father’d slumped down a bit as well. No shots fired yet, but no need to risk it.

Sam turned back to the rear window, and watched a black SUV make the same turn they did, two cars behind. A second one followed. It raised a flag, but there were a lot of SUVs around.

“Dean, you ditched the trackers already, right?” Alex suddenly asked into the silence. He sounded calm, but his voice was low and his expression grim.

“Yeah, a while back,” Dean said. Then he muttered, “Can you lose them?”

“Probably,” Alex replied, but he had an optimistic note in his voice, like ‘probably’ really meant ‘definitely’.

At the same moment, Sam saw the two SUVs make another turn with them. He felt his skin prickle all over. 

“How?” Dean asked. “None of us know Vegas that well. Is there a safe house here? Or back up?”

“Don’t need back up,” Alex said shortly. “There’s an exit, okay?”

“An exit?” Dean said, but at that moment, the SUVs accelerated, overtaking a car each to close in on the Impala. 

“Alex,” Sam blurted out, warning him even though Alex had to have already seen. 

He had. The Impala sped out from between the SUVs, and then Alex spun the wheel, flinging the car across a luckily-empty lane and around a corner. As soon as they straightened, he sped up again. Buildings and lights flew past as they shot through the traffic.

The SUVs followed, still there, dark under the bright lights. 

John pulled out the map, muttering, “Where the fuck does this road go?”

“Don’t worry, we’re almost there,” Alex said. He sounded relaxed, way too relaxed for what they were doing. Sam caught a worried glance Dean flicked Alex’s way, and abruptly remembered something he’d read in a novel about warzones and coping mechanisms. 

“Almost where?” Dean asked, before Sam could follow that thought anywhere useful. 

Alex wrenched on the wheel again instead of answering, and he accelerated harder this time, revving the engine until they were _flying_ down the street. Horns blared, and they swerved around the other cars on the road.

“Alex,” Dean said nervously. “Alex, you know I trust you with anything, but.” Alex braked hard, and one of Dean’s hands flew out to brace himself on the dashboard. “This is my baby. I just got her back.”

“I know, Dean,” Alex said comfortingly, and the Impala’s tires squealed on bitumen as they careened around another corner. “And like I said, we’re almost there.”

“Almost _where_?” John demanded angrily, repeating Dean’s unanswered question.

Alex grinned into the rear view mirror. “No time to explain. You’re just gonna have to trust me,” he said again, then braked hard and pulled the steering wheel sharply to the right.

When Sam recovered his balance, they were in an alley, speeding along behind what looked like a hotel. Alex kept accelerating, manoeuvring them expertly past dumpsters and piles of crates. Dean still had a hand on the dash, and he was also gripping his doorhandle.

Sam glanced behind him and found the SUVs had made the turn, were still tight on them in the confines of the alley. “Shit,” Sam muttered, and he hoped like hell that whatever Alex was doing would work. 

He braked again and turned, this time into an even narrower alley than before. Sam watched the walls passing just a few inches from the Impala’s side mirrors with a kind of sick fascination. Dean, though, Dean wasn’t looking at that, Dean was staring straight ahead of them with a fixed expression of horror on his face.

Ahead, where – instead of another street or maybe the entrance to a garage or whatever – there was only wall. Wall made of heavy, solid-looking brick, wall that was rushing up to meet them at high speed.

“Holy fuck,” Sam blurted out, because that was a _dead end_.

Alex _accelerated_. A lot of things happened at once. 

Sam realised Alex wasn’t relaxed, he was _possessed_ , and he was going to kill them all. Sam heard him start to mutter a long string of unrecognisable words, words with too many syllables

Dean yelled something almost as incomprehensible, shocked phrases that included Alex’s name and a bunch of curse words. 

John lunged forwards, probably intent on grabbing the demon in the car with them and making him brake somehow, although he couldn’t possibly be quick enough to save them.

And he missed, anyway. The Alex-demon leaned forwards at the same moment, whatever he’d been muttering abruptly became yelling, and he slapped one hand on the Impala’s dashboard.

The car’s engine roared, and they ploughed into the wall at full speed.


	12. Diabolic Scheme

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from a song by the Hives.

Dean’s eyes slammed shut at the last moment and his whole body flinched in anticipation of the crash. He couldn’t watch, couldn’t see his car crumple on impact, not again.

Horror overwhelmed him; horror that he’d trusted Alex to drive, horror that Alex was obviously a demon and Dean hadn’t even realised, horror that John and Sam were about to die because of Dean’s mistake. Horror that Alex was going to die, too. 

Horror that he’d failed so goddamn badly.

But the crash never came. There was a flash that Dean could see from behind his eyelids, and then he realised that they hadn’t crashed, that they were still moving, still _driving_. His eyes flew open.

The car rocketed down a dark, empty road. No buildings, no people, no neon lights. Dean didn’t know how it was possible, but they weren’t in Vegas anymore. 

They hadn’t crashed, they’d driven _through the wall_. And ended up in the desert. _What the fuck_.

“Get off me,” Alex was yelling. He was still behind the wheel, undamaged. He’d leaned forwards when they were crashing, but now John had wrenched him back. 

“Fucking stop the—“ His father’s growl cut off when he noticed where they were, when he realised they were still moving and un-crashed. He froze, staring out through the un-smashed windscreen with one hand still bunched tightly in Alex’s coat.

Alex clenched his teeth and gripped the steering wheel, and angry grimace on his face. The tires screeched, Dean was thrown forwards, and the car fishtailed as Alex braked hard.

They finally slid to a stop, with the car still on the road but slung haphazardly across the centerline. Alex cut the engine, and shocked silence stretched out between them all. 

Dean stared around wildly, between Alex and the car and what little of the desert he could see in the dark outside the windows, on either side of whatever the fuck road this was. 

Before anyone could do anything, Alex elbowed John’s now-unresisting hands off him and reached across to the glove box. He opened it with a grim expression and shaking hands, pulled something out and got out of the car. Dean watched with blank incomprehension as he went around to the front and leaned over the hood. 

Alex uncapped the permanent marker – Dean had never kept permanent markers in the glove box, where the hell had it come from? – and started drawing on the hood of the car.

Apparently, this was too much for John. “Motherfucker, he muttered angrily, and shoved his door open. Dean got out as well, feeling slow, a little shell-shocked, and really fucking uncertain about what the fuck had just happened. Where the hell _were_ they?

John showed no such uncertainty. When he reached Alex, he yanked him off the hood of the car, physically twisted him around, then slammed him down on his back. “What the hell is the matter with you? Are you trying to get us killed?” he shouted, into Alex’s tense, scowling face. 

_No_ , Dean thought reflexively, adrenalin kicking in and wiping away his shock. He scrambled around the car, intent on pulling them apart. 

He wasn’t fast enough. Before he could pull John away, Alex had already reacted to John’s attack with a fist to the face. 

It wasn’t a hard punch, he didn’t have the leverage, but he followed it up with a shove that almost sent John sprawling out on the ground. It separated them, anyway, long enough for Dean to get in the middle, hands gripping his father’s shirt to hold him back from another attack. “Dad. Dad! Stop,” he ground out.

The wild look in his father’s eyes was scary. No, it was _scared_ , and Christ, they’d just driven through a _wall_. It wasn’t like Dean didn’t get it. He knew his own hands would be shaking if they weren’t clenched in the front of John’s shirt. He held on, though, held him back. Finally, John relented. 

Dean’d had his back to Alex, and when he thought John wouldn’t make another move, he turned around. “Alex, what the fuck?” he breathed out. 

Alex stared back stubbornly, and Dean hadn’t meant the words as an attack, but he didn’t think he could let this slide. 

Then, heart in his throat, he said, “Christo.”

No black eyes, not even a flinch. This was Alex. Dean’s whole body shivered in relief.

He gathered himself back together, and noticed Alex was levelling him with a pissed-off glare. But Dean wasn’t about to apologise for checking. Alex had driven them through a _wall_. 

“Okay, so seriously,” Dean said, trying to sound calmer, trying to sound like he was just _asking_. “What just happened? And where the fuck are we?” he added at the last minute, glancing around. The road they were on had no streetlights, and the desert looked eerie in the silver and grey light of the almost-full moon.

Something in Alex’s expression had closed up, and he was silent for a moment. His eyes were shadowed as he studied the two of them, and then warily watched Sam as well when he came into view. 

“Right now, we’re forty miles north-west of where we were a few minutes ago,” he eventually admitted.

“You mean, a few minutes ago when you _drove us into a wall_?” John interjected, stepping around Dean so he could accuse Alex without anyone in the way.

Alex glared at him. “When I _ditched our tail_ , yeah, that’s exactly what I mean,” he spat angrily. 

“You call that _ditching a tail_?” John shouted.

“Enough,” Dean snapped. John looked betrayed, but Dean went on. “He’s not a demon. We’re not dead, we’re not captured by whoever the hell was in those SUVs,” he said to his father. “Yes, it was fucked up, but I want to know _exactly_ what happened before we start fighting again,” he insisted hoarsely.

Everyone seemed to pause, to digest that. No-one seemed willing to make the first move.

Finally, Alex relented and said bitterly, “Look, I get it, okay? I didn’t explain what was going on, tonight’s been twelve kinds of fucked up, nothing makes sense. I know it’s all been a shock. But I have to do _one more thing_ , and then we can hash this out.” His voice had something dark in it, he wasn’t really asking permission so much as _telling_ them, and he was glaring at John as he spoke. 

“One more thing, and then what? Are we going back for the weapon?”John demanded.

Frustration crossed Alex’s face. “When I finish with the car, we will discuss it.”

John released a noise of incoherent fury, but Dean interrupted again before his father could actually explode. 

“That’s fine,” he said sharply, glaring at his father. “It’s okay as long as you’re gonna explain,” he added, to Alex. 

Alex had been glaring steadily at John, but Dean’s reply finally broke him out of it. He looked warily at Dean, eyes guarded, and Dean could have sworn he caught a glimpse of hurt and distrust flickering somewhere underneath. Before he could be sure, Alex nodded and turned his back on them, leaning over the car again.

Dean had one second to worry about the strain on Alex’s face and the exhaustion that seemed even deeper than it had earlier that day, before John had grabbed him by the arm and wrenched him around to face him.

“Okay? _Okay_? Dean, we have no idea what just happened, _what part of that is okay_?” John demanded, and Dean’s hackles rose.

“The part where no-one’s dead,” Dean repeated, trying to sound more sure about it than he felt. “Or captured. We’re all in one piece, and I trust him to know that this road is safe,” he added, gesturing at the empty darkness around them. “So the interrogation can wait until he’s done.”

Dean stared at his father, unflinching. He was hoping John would be convinced, or at least remember what he’d agreed to at the beginning of the night. But John’s glare went from disbelieving to disgusted, his jaw clenched, and then his mouth twisted like he was about to say something.

He didn’t. Dean kept staring, refused to back down, and John didn’t seem willing to put his revulsion into words. 

He let go of Dean’s arm, and Dean turned away. John’s only options were stay and deal with the situation or leave, and Dean didn’t want to see either. The memory of the last time he thought he saw disgust in John’s eyes was still vivid, and he’d seen enough of his father’s back to last a lifetime. 

He looked at Sam. “What about you? You pissed off? Gonna shove anybody?”

Sam’s eyes went wide, and he cast a nervous look at their father that Dean ignored. “Dude, I’m just. I have no idea what’s going on. I just want an explanation.” 

And that was very Sam, to ask questions first and throw punches afterwards. Dean just nodded. The adrenalin and anger of the past few minutes was draining out of him, and he crossed his arms when he realised his hands were actually shaking, just like he’d expected. 

Because they’d just driven _through a wall_. 

He reined it in, though, shoved the shuddering feeling deep down, and stared ahead. He watched Alex finish with the hood and move around to the driver’s side door, like paying attention to what he was doing could make this whole thing seem more normal. It didn’t work, of course, but he could pretend it did, pretend like he knew what was going on even though he had no goddamn idea, pretend like, a few minutes earlier, he hadn’t been _terrified out of his mind_. 

But he trusted Alex. Owed him, owed him enough to back him up like he’d promised, even over this. Terror didn’t matter, he wouldn’t break ranks and switch sides. John needed to learn that. 

He wouldn’t give in and demand answers, either, no matter how badly he wanted to. 

“Don’t touch, Sam,” Alex said quietly. Dean shook himself out of his thoughts and looked up, to see that Sam had gone over to peer at the symbols on the car. It was dark, the ink was black on black, and it wasn’t like Sam had a flashlight, so Dean didn’t know what he’d been hoping to see.

“Sorry,” Sam said, and moved his hand away from where he’d been about to touch the lettering.

“Are we allowed to ask what you’re doing?” John said sulkily.

Alex had shifted to the backseat door on the driver’s side, so Dean couldn’t see him, but he could imagine the eyeroll. “I’m hiding the car. I’m pretty sure that right now we’re out of range of whatever search they could scramble together, but I figure it’s a good idea. I don’t know who else might be looking for us, either.”

“Oh,” John said, and Dean could hear the considering note in his voice. His anger seemed to relent a little, and Dean wondered why, after all this time, he could still gauge the level of the man’s anger when he’d barely said a word, he was six feet away, and Dean had his back turned. 

Next, Alex slid into the driver’s seat and wrote more symbols all over the leather in the middle of the bench, between where the driver and passenger would sit. As Dean watched, waiting, anxiety started threading through him. More anxiety, if he was being accurate, because the whole situation had him plenty tense already. Strangely, it wasn’t about the fact that Alex was scribbling all over his car in permanent marker. He actually didn’t care about that, Alex could do whatever he wanted to the car short of crashing it.

But on top of everything else, now there was magic. He knew enough about it to know that none of the shit Alex had done tonight was easy. It wasn’t the kind of magic that anyone with a book and a couple of herbs could do. Between the power Dean’d felt in the garage earlier and the part where Alex fucking _drove them through a wall_ , it was perfectly obvious that Alex had skilled-up somewhere along the line. The question Dean now wanted to ask was _when_?

Because it was shocking how easily he did it. Dean knew Alex’d always been okay at the everyman kind of stuff, but the symbols, the languages, and most importantly, the _power_ involved in tonight? It was like Alex suddenly had the kind of power that only came with practice, and up until a year ago, Dean had never known him to practice. He’d never been interested, always said he’d just leave it to Willow.

So what the fuck had changed? 

It occurred to Dean, as he watched Alex finish with the passenger side doors and head around to the trunk of the car, that this was going to be one of two things. It would be yet another thing Dean had missed while they’d been apart, yet another gap between them, or it’d be another secret, something Alex refused to discuss. 

The thought of either had cold twisting in the pit of his stomach, because how many gaps could there be before Alex decided it wasn’t worth explaining himself anymore? How many secrets before he decided keeping them was too much trouble and he’d be better off without Dean’s scrutiny? 

Dean gritted his teeth, and tried to shove the thoughts out of his mind. He shouldn’t even get started thinking that way, he had enough shit to worry about as it was. And he sure as hell didn’t want his uncertainty showing on his face in front of his father. Uncertainty, misery, worry; he had to shove it all down.

All he could do was back Alex up, no matter what. No matter how bad it started to look, Dean was staying until Alex told him to leave.

The reminder helped, a little, which was good, because at that moment, Alex came back around the car. He stood facing the hood for a moment, then turned his head and said to Dean, “Give me your hand.”

Dean didn’t even pause. He stepped forward without question.

“Dean,” he heard John say, but one sharp glare at his father was all it took to remind him whose side Dean was on.

Alex had ignored all of this, and said, “I want to use you to hide the car. It’s a little complicated to explain, but it won’t hurt or anything.”

“Okay,” Dean agreed, offering his hand, palm up.

Alex took it and guided it down to rest on the hood of the car, still warm from the engine. Dean could barely see any of the writing, but he figured his hand was right in the middle of the symbols.

Alex’s hand covered Dean’s, holding it down. He started muttering something under his breath; Dean could hear enough of it to know he didn’t recognise the language. He also thought Alex sounded strained, like he was too tired for this. He persisted, though, and Dean couldn’t bring himself to interrupt, to break what was obviously hard-won concentration.

After a few phrases, everything Alex had written started to glow. Dean startled and almost jerked away, but Alex’s hand over his kept him in place. As the light intensified, the surface of the car got hotter, and Dean could feel it radiating outwards.

But it was like the temperature of a really hot shower. It didn’t feel _dangerous_ , he realised. Just hot.

And somehow, it felt noticeably different from the stuff Alex had erased earlier in the garage. This light seemed warmer, less hostile, even though that didn’t really make sense. If there was a difference, though, if he wasn’t just imagining it, Dean figured it was probably because of Alex, because even though Dean was freaked out about the fact that there was magic going on at all, and even though he was even more freaked out knowing Alex was the one doing it, somehow he couldn’t bring himself to feel threatened. And that had to be about Alex.

Alex, who was still muttering another long string of words and phrases. His eyes were closed, and his voice gradually got louder and louder. As he spoke, the glow sharpened, until Dean had to lift his free arm over his eyes or risk the afterimage getting burnt into his retinas. 

Then Alex finished abruptly, with a word that was almost a shout. The light beating on Dean’s eyelids vanished, and he hesitantly uncovered his face. The writing was gone, and he wondered whether it’d been absorbed into the car in a reverse of what they’d seen in the workshop. 

“What the hell,” Sam exhaled from behind them. Dean ignored him, because he’d turned his attention to Alex, who was still leaning on the car with his eyes closed, trying to get his breath back.

“I’d like to ask the same thing,” John said grimly from behind them both. 

Dean ignored him, too. “Hey,” he said to Alex, after a few more moments without a reaction from him. “Are you okay?” He kept his voice soft, almost a whisper. Alex’s hand was still covering his.

Dean’s whisper was enough to make Alex finally raise his head and open his eyes. He looked at Dean, and fuck he looked tired. All the energy seemed to have drained out of him, and Dean, more than ever, wanted to lock him away and force him to sleep for a week. 

He restrained himself, though, and Alex huffed out a breath and released Dean’s hand. As Dean straightened, Alex turned and slumped back to sit against the hood of the car with his eyes closed. Dean thought he caught a glimmer of satisfaction in his expression, though. 

“You finally done?” Dean asked.

Alex exhaled again, a real sigh this time, and opened his eyes so he could stare down at the ground. “Yes,” he eventually said. “It’s done.” 

There was a short silence, then John said, “What’s done, exactly?” Dean shot him a look, but he seemed less confrontational than before. 

Alex didn’t seem concerned, anyway. “The car’s hidden,” he explained tiredly. “I tied the spell to Dean, because it’s his car, but yeah. Runes for distraction and blindness. Anyone looking for that car with ill intent towards its owner won’t be able to find it. And they can’t find me, so they’ll be looking for the car,” he finished. 

They paused to digest that. “Okay,” Dean said slowly. “You’ve hidden us from the people chasing us.”

Alex nodded, but before he could add anything, Sam asked, “What about. What about the wall?” He stumbled a little on the words, no doubt remembering the terror, and swallowed hard. “Can they track whatever that was?”

“No, they can’t. Exits are hidden, and the magic’s untraceable. They’ll know we did something to escape, but they won’t be able to find out what.”

Another short pause. “Exits,” John began, glowering again. “About that.”

Alex sighed, and cut him off with a wave of his hand. “I know, I know. I should have explained it,” he admitted, then said, “I didn’t, because exits aren’t something you talk about if you don’t have to, and definitely not something you talk about when someone can overhear you. We were moving too fast for me to explain properly, so I figured it could wait until after I got us out.” He stopped, exhaustion sharpening on his face again. 

“What are they, the exits? There’s more than one?” Dean asked cautiously. Alex seemed to need questions, to be prompted, but Dean didn’t want to start another interrogation if Alex wasn’t really up to it.

“Yeah. They’re portals, basically,” Alex replied. “There’s a few scattered around in different cities. Not many people know they exist, let alone where they are and how to use them. You say the right words and go through, you get taken out of the city. It’s...it’s an exit,” he repeated helplessly, waving his hand again like it would help them understand.

Dean frowned. A portal. Okay. “And it portal-ed us forty miles outside of Vegas?” he prompted, hoping Alex would explain some more.

Alex latched on, relieved. “Yeah, north-west. That’s why I said we were heading to Barstow, when they were still listening. Because I knew that if we had to use it, the exit would take us here instead, in the opposite direction,” he said, gesturing to the empty road around them. 

“By now they know we knew they were listening, so they might not trust anything we said,” he added. “But they’ll search for us in the city first, and even if they don’t try Barstow after that, we’ll be long gone from here by then. We’re about ten minutes drive from the Interstate.”

Dean looked up and down the road they were on. For the first time, he noticed a faint glow in the distance somewhere behind them, and realised it must be Vegas, to the south. The interstate they were near must be the one heading up to Utah.

“So when you said we ditched the tail...we really ditched the tail,” he managed, surprised and kind of awed. Of all the random shit that’d gone on that evening...well, if this was what happened when Alex used magic, Dean might just be able to get behind it.

“What about the weapon? Can we go back now that the car is hidden?” John said.

Rather than get irritated that he was _once again_ asking that question, Alex stared at him, uncomprehending. Then he did a double-take. “Shit. Sorry. I am really, really tired,” he said, a bleak almost-laugh escaping his mouth. Then, instead of explaining what he meant, he pushed himself to his feet and walked around to the trunk of the car.

Dean after a second’s surprise, helplessly followed. “Alex,” he began, then stopped. John and Sam had followed as well, and they watched Alex, confused.

Alex had opened the trunk and leaned way in to get at the upper corner of the right-hand-side. And the only thing that used to be in that corner was Dean’s hiding place, a kind of ledge up in the back where Dean used to stash stuff like the polaroid, so what the fuck?

Finally, Alex found what he was looking for and pulled himself out. He held a thin, cloth wrapped bundle, about as long as someone’s forearm.

“Here,” he said simply, handing the bundle to John. “Keep it sheathed. And don’t ever, _ever_ touch the blade. I’m serious, one scratch from it is apparently enough kill you.” 

A few pieces slotted into place in Dean’s brain, and he did a double-take of his own. “Is that...” He felt like he was about to swallow his tongue.

“Yep,” Alex nodded, sitting heavily on the edge of the trunk like if he had to stay on his feet for another second he’d fall over. “That, my friends, was the handover,” he said. 

 

***

Dean stared, watching exhaustion and triumph chase themselves across Alex’s face, along with something darkly amused. For a long moment, the three of them were shocked into silence. 

Then John let out an explosive “ _What_?” He looked poleaxed, and stared down at the bundle in his hands. Then he unwrapped it hastily, his hands shaking. Inside was a knife, a slender blade with an old handle in a busted-looking sheath. “Oh my god,” he said faintly, then demanded, “It was in the car the whole time?” His voice was a strange combination of frustration and amazement.

Alex shrugged. “I kept telling you to trust me.”

“Trust you?” John said, disbelieving.

Dean glared at him. “Hey,” he snapped. 

“Dean, he was running a con this whole time,” John replied hotly. His anger was almost half-hearted, though, and he kept glancing down at the weapon in his hands, cradling it reverently.

Alex just grinned meanly. Then he dropped the expression and seemed to become all businesslike. “So. You guys want to do this here, or should we get on the move? I don’t think they’ll find us for a while, but explaining it all is going to take some time.”

“Here. Right now,” John insisted. 

“Fair enough,” Alex agreed, although he was studying John carefully. He looked down, and paused to gather his thoughts. To start, he took a deep breath.

“What I didn’t tell you earlier, is that this was always going to be more than just a meet. Giles told me this job would be just like one I did three months ago, in Scotland, when a Council agent working undercover needed to get some information to us and we knew she’d be followed. We also knew she’d be killed or worse if she was caught. So, to keep her safe, we set up a fake situation and a code, to let her pass the information to me without looking suspicious to the people watching her.” He paused, then said, “I didn’t know who she was, until she tracked me down in Glasgow and offered me a job.”

It took a second for it to actually make sense to Dean, and even though he probably should have figured it out already, he still took a step back in surprise. “ _Spike_? Spike was the contact?”

“Yeah, he was,” Alex said, meeting Dean’s eyes for the briefest moment. Dean’s breath caught at the haunted edge in his look. Alex looked away, and said, “I didn’t know it was him, not at first, but as soon as he offered me the job...” He trailed off, and stared at his feet for a second.

Dean abruptly remembered the sheer panic on Alex’s face in the bar, which must have been when first saw the vampire. Add that to the way Alex fought so hard to escape, and the way Spike had seemed apologetic that they’d even sent him... It all added up to something, even if Dean didn’t know what it was. 

The others had been stunned to silence. “So...so that was the meet. In the alley,” John eventually said, sounding a little like he was thinking aloud. “Nothing was ever going to happen in the bar.”

“Nope. Well, it could have, if Spike had approached me in the bar. The alley was better, I guess.” He cleared his throat. “After the job offer to identify himself as the contact, Spike could have said something else that would translate to a location. Saying he had a gift meant that he was going to hand the package over then and there, instead,” Alex said, almost like he was reciting something.

“The car...” Dean said slowly, thinking back. “Spike stole my car especially for this?” he said, angrily and a little disbelieving.

Alex gave him a vaguely apologetic look. “Sort of. He didn’t steal it himself, but it was part of the plan, part of the misdirection. It’s a bluff, kind of, almost like a Trojan horse except the analogy doesn’t totally track.”

Dean frowned. A Trojan horse? But Alex had already moved on. 

“The pigeon thing isn’t part of the Glasgow job, but it’s what told me we’d be followed, that there were tracers on the car,” he said. Then he muttered thoughtfully, “Although, come to think of it, pigeons don’t happen in Vegas like they do in Europe, so that’s really not all that inconspicuous. I wonder if they know Spike tipped me off?”

He thought about it for a second, then dismissed it, like he’d decided it was Spike’s problem. 

“Pigeons,” John said roughly, still staring down at the weapon in his hands in disbelief. Alex raised an eyebrow, but John didn’t seem to have any more comments to make.

“Yeah, so,” Alex began, and before he could stop himself, Dean interrupted.

“Who’s ‘they’? Why did you have to do all of this?” he asked. Someone stole his car, someone chased them, someone was a threat to Alex. Apparently, despite appearances, it wasn’t actually Spike, but hopefully it’d be someone Dean could shoot.

Alex studied him. “’They’ are where the weapon was extracted from. Spike’s involvement, with Angel and the car and everything, means that the weapon had to come from Wolfram and Hart.” He spoke a little slowly, like he'd thought about it and he was sure it was the only explanation that made sense.

“Aren’t they a law firm?” Sam said, surprised. 

“Yeah, they are,” Alex agreed. “An evil law firm. Most of their clients are demons and anyone who works for them has sold their soul to do so. These days, Angel runs the LA branch,” he added, making a face.

“I thought he was on Buffy’s side?” Dean frowned. 

Alex shrugged. “Not anymore. I’ve heard he’s claiming this whole gig with the law firm is about trying to take them down from the inside, but I’m not too clear on the details. Not that I care, because it’s not like I believe anything he says anyway,” he added, muttering. 

“But... Why’s he helping out if he’s not a Council ally?” Dean asked, confused.

“Oh, he’s not, he’s probably not even involved,” Alex clarified. He was still talking a little slowly, like he was putting it all together in his head as he said it out loud. “If he was, the first thing Spike would have said was ‘Angel’s offering you a job’ instead of ‘I’m offering you a job’. I know he talked about Angel later, but all that was just more cover.” 

Alex paused, then added, “It makes sense. Angel’s far too compromised for Giles to trust him, and he’s no personal ally of mine. This whole setup isn’t even really his style. He’s Spike and Wesley’s boss, though, and they probably convinced him the job offer was a good idea without letting him in on the scheme.” Alex paused, then groaned. “Which means he really is trying to hire me, which _therefore_ means he’s deluded as well as an asshole. God,” he grimaced.

“Who’s Wesley?” Sam was watching Alex closely, intrigued.

“Former Watcher, who works at Wolfram and Hart as well. He’s compromised in a different way,” Alex said grimly. “But he’s the person most likely to recognise this weapon if he saw it in Wolfram and Hart’s cache. Giles would have contacted him through a secure channel after the demon attacked me in the warehouse, asking for leads, and Wesley would have agreed to get this weapon for us. He would have recruited Spike to help out with the extraction, and they both would have enjoyed pulling one over on Angel.” Alex shrugged again, and gestured as if to say ‘you know the rest’.

“Okay,” Dean stalled, thinking. He wanted to ask, 'when the fuck did you plan this?' but instead said, “The tracking devices were theirs?” He felt like Alex had already answered that question, but still. The more information he had, the better. His mind was spinning a bit, trying to sort through everything.

“The tracking devices belong to the company. As soon as the job offer was on the table, the firm wanted to track me because I was their employee, or track me so they could come after me and make me change my mind if I said no to their offer. They would have added the tracking devices to the car when it was being rebuilt, and Spike or Wesley would have known.” 

“And they told you how to get rid of them. Which part of the code was that?” Sam asked, fascinated. 

“It was all on the note,” Alex replied curtly. “Along with the weapon’s hiding place.”

“Huh,” John managed.

Dean eyed the car anxiously. “You got all of it out, though?” he said, before he could stop himself. “They can’t steal the car again, right? Or come after you?”

“No, it’s hidden. They can’t get through the exit, they can’t trace me, they can’t trace the car. And hopefully we’ve covered the weapon transfer well enough that by the time they realise it’s missing, we’ll be the last people they think of.”

“They’d really come after it? I mean, you said they were evil, but... I don’t know, they’re just lawyers,” Sam said.

Alex raised his eyebrows at Sam. “ _Evil_ lawyers,” he stressed. “Giles doesn’t insist on all this cloak and dagger bullshit for no reason.” He looked between them, taking in the frowns, the slight amount of incomprehension Dean knew was still flickering over his own face. 

Alex sighed a little, resigned himself to explaining some more. 

“So, yeah, okay, Spike and Wesley could have cooked up some other reason for Spike to come to Vegas. And yeah, he could have bumped into me ‘accidentally’, planted the weapon on me without all the fuss, and then headed home again.”

“But people know that he knows me,” he explained patiently. “And from what I’ve heard of Wolfram and Hart, they probably have him followed whenever he leaves the office. They also probably know who I am and what I do, they probably know more about me and Spike and our history than I’m totally comfortable with. And the upshot of all that is that anything simpler would have screamed set up.”

“All it would take would be a single glimpse of the weapon, or a big-enough hole in whatever story supposedly brought Spike to Vegas. They’d imprison him in a hell dimension and then they’d come after me. They’d roast both of us,” he finished, sounding horribly matter-of-fact.

“They _did_ come after you,” Dean reminded him, shooting Sam a pointed look.

“Exactly. About a job offer. You guys saw the SUVs, you saw the tracking devices. Imagine if they knew we’d stolen a priceless, dangerous weapon from them. These are not people you run some half-assed scam on.”

Dean’s stomach clenched, and he must have looked worried, because Alex went on. 

“Don’t worry about it, Dean. The job went off well, and the setup was good. Spike had a legitimate excuse for a specific kind of contact, and I’m pretty sure we’ve anticipated all of their moves. The job offer’s a good cover, especially with the car.”

“Yeah?” he frowned.

Alex nodded. When he spoke, it seemed again like this was part of the plan he'd only guessed at, but again, like it was all that made sense. “Angel’s in a situation where it’s not totally out of the ballpark for him to try and hire someone he knows is on the right side. The company knows his loyalty to them is questionable, so they wouldn’t be surprised by the attempt. Getting me would also be a coup against the slayer, so they might have even encouraged the play, even though everyone knew it didn’t have much of a chance of working.”

“Then, as part of the offer, Spike gets to give me something that Wolfram and Hart think they have their fingers all over already, something they’re going to believe was the point of the meet,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder at the car. “My reaction to it all was realistic, and if they work out that Spike tipped me off about the trackers, I doubt they’ll even be that bothered given what they know about our relationship and the fact that Spike’s still got a soul.”

Alex paused for a moment, then added thoughtfully, “The car fits in there, too, because it made Spike look like he had an agenda. The car has enough significance to me, and to Dean, that it looked like by stealing it, he was trying to piss someone off, either me or Dean or both, and frankly, that’s a very Spike thing to do. The more cover over the fact that all of us have a totally different goal, the better,” he finished.

Silence fell as they all process it, or tried to. 

“Wow,” Dean finally said. He still felt slightly bewildered, but the more he thought about it, about the layers, one bluff over the other, the more impressed he was. He stared at Alex, awed, until the tips of Alex’s ears flushed and he cleared his throat. "When the fuck did you plan this?"

"I didn't," he shook his head. "I knew the Glasgow job, so I knew the code. Some of it was explained on the note Spike slipped me, and the rest...well, I know enough to work out the rest." He shrugged, then added awkwardly, "My brain started going double-time in that alley, trying to figure it all out. Some of it, I'm guessing about." He shrugged again.

Sam interrupted, though, before Dean could say anything. “Why didn’t you just tell us at the beginning? Let us in on what you did know?” he said, voice low and a little wounded. “We could have helped. Or argued with you less, at least,” he added, with a glance at John.

“You didn’t _not_ help,” Alex insisted. “And...well, there were a couple of reasons.” He hesitated again, then said, “The major reason was that I didn’t know about any of this before we started. I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t know who the contact was going to be. It could have been someone you weren’t supposed to know about, and if that’d happened, it’d be better to keep the smoke screen of the job offer and stuff. I could have pretended I got the weapon another way.” 

“Also, even though I didn’t know what the threat actually was, I knew that if Giles was putting me – us, I mean – through all of this meant that it was probably going to be bad. He wouldn't expose me to Wolfram and Hart lightly, and if something had gone wrong and they caught me, the less you all knew, the better, especially about whether or not we had the weapon,” he said simply.

That sent a chill through Dean, as he imagined the consequences if it _had_ all gone wrong. Giles' involvement - planning and coordinating all of this for them - had him partly grateful, partly horrified.

Dean knew Giles had no reason to trust them, but he had even less reason to expose Alex to danger just so they could get a weapon. Dean could barely believe he'd done all of this for them, for John. He'd never be able to thank him enough. Hell, from what Alex had said about the law firm, Dean might even thank Spike one day, if he stopped wanting to pull a gun on the bastard, but he'd never be able to thank Alex

At the same time, though, Giles - and Spike, and whoever else had been involved in this con - had exposed Alex to danger. _So_ much danger. _Alex_.

Dean tried to shove down the protective terror at the thought. He focused carefully on the gratitude, because he knew Alex would appreciate it more.

"Tell Giles thanks, from us,” he said roughly.

Surprised, Alex said softly, “Sure.”

They stared at each other for a second, the rest of the world dropping away like darkness. Then Alex broke it again, looked at the others, and said quickly, “Anyway. We have the weapon, we’ve evaded capture by people who probably want to force me to sign the kind of employment contract that hocks my soul to the bad place, and you have your car back,” he added, in Dean’s direction. “I’m calling tonight a success.”

John snorted, but then he surprised the hell out of Dean by grinning openly at Alex. “Kid, your criteria for success need some serious work. But I guess we can go with it just this once.” 

Alex rolled his eyes, but the meanness was gone, and Dean, still working on the retrospective fear that was currently turning his stomach to acid, decided he would take what he could get. “Let’s hit the road,” John said, sounding practically upbeat. 

Before they could go more than a few steps, Alex said, “Wait.” Dean watched John turn around, watched Alex hold his hand out. “Give me the knife? I think we should keep it hidden in the trunk.”

John hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah, okay.” His faith in Alex seemed restored to the point where he could freely hand over their only chance at killing the demon. And as Dean watched Alex lean into the trunk again, replacing the knife where it’d been hidden before, it actually struck him that they had a chance at killing the demon.

They had a chance at killing the demon. They had a weapon. They might be able to do this, they might be able to fight it, he might be able to keep Alex safe. 

The swell of hope in his chest was almost painful. He couldn’t quite shake the feeling that the risk hadn't and would never be worth it, but they were all alive, and _they had a weapon_. 

“Dean, can I drive?” John was asking, and Dean cleared his throat again, hoping his face looked normal. 

“Can you—Uh, sure, I guess,” he said, feeling addled. He should have hesitated – the car was his, god, he had his car back too, tonight was _amazing_ – but his brain was spinning too much for him to care too badly. 

They all climbed in, slamming doors. He was in the back next to Alex, and John started the engine; his baby growled, and seriously, it felt like they were starting over, like they’d all just been freed from something. Dean hadn’t realised how tense he’d been, how much dread he’d carried, until some of it was gone. 

“The highway is up ahead. Follow this road, go left, then right,” Alex instructed.

“Will do,” John said, and his voice was almost warm. Dean would have been amused at John’s one-eighty on whether or not he liked Alex, but he was too busy agreeing whole-heartedly. 

Because danger and risk aside, Dean could understand the scope of what Alex had just pulled off. It could have gone completely, absolutely wrong, if Alex had been even slightly less capable. And Dean was impressed. Pissed off and horrified that Alex had risked himself. But also impressed. 

And now they had a weapon.

Dean ducked his head to hide his involuntary grin. God, up and down, he was back on that fucking rollercoaster again. He needed to get himself under control.

He was still busy smiling to himself, though, as John peeled out and aimed them in the direction of the Interstate.


End file.
